Pigments manufacture

The earliest pigments produced locally by Charles Atkins Pty. Ltd., near Melbourne, were probably toluidine scarlets and Hansa yellows. The range of pigments was expanded by Smith Reichhold Colours Pty. Ltd. at Botany, utilising the technology of S. H. Smith of the UK and the Reichhold Chemical Company of the USA to manufacture toluidine scarlets, Hansa yellows, the ink pigments benzidene yellows, 2-B and 4-B toners and some lake red C toners. Local production was further increased when in 1961 ICI Australia[144] commissioned a pigment plant at Laverton, adding the complete range of alpha-form and beta-phthalocyanine blues, halogenated phthalocyanine greens, naphthol reds, azo greens and lithol toners.

Early pigment manufacture had been largely empirical, but when the above plants were constructed, recent advances were incorporated in all three plants. The ICI Laverton plant took a new finishing process directly from the laboratory to full plant scale. The process had been developed in Australia, proved a complete success and was eventually also applied overseas. A joint company, Pigments Manufacturers of Australia was then formed in 1970 by ICI Australia and BASF Australia; it incorporated both parent companies' and the locally developed know-how.

Most solvents used in the paint industry are also produced in Australia as are the most important plasticisers and their intermediates; they are part of the chemical industry (see pp 714-6).

To anyone but a paint chemist a survey of the development of the industry in Australia, inseparable as it is from the enumeration of a rapid succession of polymeric systems, must be a tour de force. Yet, it is illustrative to the generalist, too. It demonstrates the complexity of a constant flow of know-how, based essentially on international technology, with which local industry, in effect only a small band of technologists and scientists, had to cope if they wished to remain competitive. The Australian paint industry obviously did not have the option to generate all the know-how required. The skill resided in evaluation of the trends which mattered, as e.g. in the early adoption of acrylics technology, in rapid adaption and, most importantly, in grafting one's own research results onto international know-how and then exploiting it, both here and overseas. This complexity and the necessary speed of reaction to world trends also demonstrate the difficulties which academic science encountered in getting involved competitively in these changes.

Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering