All Our Working Lives

Our own Nigel Davis, chemical insight editor at ICIS, is credited as an advisor on BBC4's documentary series, All Our Working Lives, which examines the economic and industrial transformation that Britain has undergone since the early Eighties.

The chemical industry episode from the original series (1984) has been updated, with Nigel's help, with a brand new 30-minute follow-up edition, and went out one evening this week while we were at EPCA.

A lot of the footage is interviews with chemical industry workers from ICI, Shell, Croda, Scott Bader, Brunner Mond and Ineos. They talk about working conditions, but also about the shift from commodity chemicals to pharma and biotech, and competition from Asia.

One worker right at the end says that he'd worked at ICI, Huntsman and Sabic, and counted himself lucky that he had always enjoyed going to work.