The rise and fall of dye chemistry

October 20, 1970, is a fateful date in Basel’s industrial history. On that day, the shareholders of Geigy and Ciba had to decide on the future of the two companies.

At Geigy, the tension was palpable in the large ballroom of the Mustermesse when shareholders met in the morning. Should their world-famous and successful company lose its independence after more than 200 years? Or would going it alone be the better solution after all? Many employees feared for their jobs and were far from enthusiastic about the merger plans.

In the end, the Board of Directors and the management prevailed with their rational arguments for the merger. Labor and capital could be better used and the geographical distribution of the business more balanced. In addition, the product ranges of the two companies complemented each other very well. All this paved the way for the Basel Marriage, as the merger was called, with the approval of Geigy’s shareholders. Now all that was needed was the vote of the Ciba shareholders.

Two hours after Geigy shareholders approved the merger, 28-year-old Ciba lab technician Peter Schad sat in the Klybeck canteen. This was where his employer’s shareholders met to vote on the merger. Unlike at Geigy, the mood at the Ciba meeting was thoroughly positive.

Peter Schad remembers that day well: “At Ciba, everyone was actually in favor of the merger. For us, it looked as if we would take over Geigy; after all, our Chairman of the Board, Robert Kaeppeli, was to head the new company.”

Ciba’s shareholders readily approved the merger, and more than 100 years after the first aniline dyes were produced in Klybeck, Ciba-Geigy was born – a global corporation with over 70 000 employees and its headquarters in Klybeck.

“It was a very exciting time for the employees,” says Peter Schad. “In many chemical areas, such as dyes and crop protection products, Ciba-Geigy was the world leader at the time. In pharmaceuticals, too, the signs were pointing to growth, and we had high expectations for the future of our company.”

Alexander Clavel had laid the foundation for these successes in 1864 with the first dye factory in Klybeck. For a long time thereafter, until the first decades of the 20th century, dyes remained the most important and lucrative business segment for companies such as Ciba, Geigy and Sandoz.

By the start of World War I, the world market for textile dyes was almost completely divided between German and Swiss companies, with Germany producing the bulk of the synthetic dyes. When German exports were blocked after the outbreak of the war, demand for Basel dyes rocketed. So it is not surprising that the three large chemical companies in Basel were able to significantly increase their sales during this time. Between 1913 and 1920, dye exports rose to 211 million Swiss francs. In addition to textile dyes, the Basel companies added other chemicals to their product range over time.

After World War I, demand for agrochemicals, photographic products, plastics and other chemical specialties began to increase rapidly, and production facilities in Klybeck were working at full capacity.

In the period between World War I and World War II, Ciba in particular continued to expand its range of highquality dye specialties. It had recognized that, in the face of increasingly fierce international competition, only those who continuously set themselves apart from the competition through innovation could survive. The short-lived monopolies thus achieved in the dyestuffs market enabled higher profit margins – a strategy that was successfully continued in the following decades.

In Klybeck, the burgeoning business left its mark. A map shows that in 1905 virtually all of Ciba’s industrial plants were  located between the Horburg cemetery and the Rhine. To the north and south, there were mainly green meadows. Thirtyfive years later, in 1940, Ciba’s production facilities extended as far as Kleinhueningen and the city of Basel.

The Basel chemical companies also enjoyed strong growth abroad. The fact that many new subsidiaries had been established between the two wars proved particularly valuable. Because neutral Switzerland was completely surrounded by the Axis powers during World War II and isolated from the world market, these additional production plants gained in importance.

Despite some difficulties encountered during World War II, such as diminishing coal supplies from Germany, Basel’s industry was in excellent shape in 1945.

The companies had invested their profits in modernizing production and now had practically the only functioning plants in Europe. With the boom that began after the end of the war, they benefitted accordingly. The goods produced in Basel were superior in quality and in great demand internationally. Only the capacity and the limited availability of raw materials held the sales figures back.

Paul Nickler remembers this period well. When he started his apprenticeship as a laboratory technician at Ciba in 1947, Klybeck still looked rural compared to today. There were already modern production buildings, yet in between there were allotment gardens and even farms along the Wiese river.

And then there were the old, shabby huts along the Rhine, where aniline dyes were produced on open wooden boilers until the 1950s. A dirty business, as Nickler recalls: “The dye production was down by the Rhine, where they produced red and green dyes. They were poor guys. They were always covered in dyes, which didn’t come off even after they showered.”

But the irritating dust from aniline dye production was only one problem. Working in these huts without ventilation or protective clothing was also very unhealthy, and the wastewater ended up in the Rhine, which was common and perfectly legal at the time.

It wasn’t until much later, in the 1970s, that ecological aspects and a consistent safety mindset began to take hold in the companies, as retired chemist Giovanni Bonavia recalls. “We tried to respect the problems and concerns of the population. And because you had odor emissions here and there, it was decided to hire a so-called sniffer team. People walked around the area, recorded their observations, also took measurements and always reported their results.”

The expansion of dye production led to the opening of a large, state-of-the-art dye production building in 1956 on Klybeckstrasse – where the streetcar stop is still called Ciba to this day.

The so-called Building 90 was one of the first multistory buildings on the Klybeck site. Right next to it, in the heart of Klybeck, stood what was then Switzerland’s tallest construct. The snow-white and 120-meter-high chimney had already been completed a year earlier. These two striking structures represented the importance that dye and chemical production had not only for Ciba and the Klybeck area, but also for the city of Basel as a whole.

A Ciba publication from the 1950s described the diverse world of dyes as follows: “Most of it is used for dyeing and printing textiles … but our dyes are also used for leather, paper, hides and furs, wood and glass fibers, aluminum and plastics, inks, varnishes and soaps, and even for coloring food.”

The same brochure also lists a long series with a total of 81 different dye assortments, each of which in turn included  dozens of shades. There were, for example, Neolane dyes for wool, Oxanal dyes for oxidized aluminum, or Coprantine dyes for textile printing. All were based on different chemical structures and complex dyeing processes.

Max Bitterli experienced this boom and innovation phase during his time as a textile laboratory technician and dye technician at Ciba. “When I joined in 1957, reactive dyes had been developed that were high-quality and washfast, which was not the case before with direct dyes.”

But the growth of the Basel industry was not limited to new dye ranges. With the invention of Araldite in 1946, Ciba took an important step in synthetic resins, and after the discovery of the insecticide DDT in 1939, sales development also accelerated at Geigy, to name just a few examples from the diverse activities of the companies.

Thus, the quarter century after the end of World War II, i.e. until the merger of Ciba and Geigy in 1970, can be described as a period of exceptionally high growth rates. The sales of the Basel chemical and pharmaceutical companies rose from the millions to the billions of Swiss francs.

This growth was recorded in all areas of Ciba, Geigy and Sandoz. And sales also continued to rise through the acquisition of new businesses. In the late 1950s, for example, Ciba expanded its business areas with Ilford photochemicals and Mettler-Toledo electronic equipment. The international presence was also steadily expanded. While Sandoz had 19 foreign subsidiaries in 1956, it owned 40 just 10 years later in 1966.

But there were also differences between the Basel companies. At Ciba and Sandoz, for example, it was increasingly the pharmaceutical division that enabled sales and profits to grow, while at Geigy the focus was on agrochemicals. These products played a major role in enabling Geigy to surpass Ciba sales in 1968. Between 1956 and 1966, Geigy’s sales rose from 511 million to 2 billion Swiss francs, and by 1968 they had already reached 2.7 billion.

A final surge

The merger of Ciba and Geigy in 1970 then brought renewed vigor to the increasingly difficult dyes and chemicals business, as Max Bitterli recalls: “The merger was really positive, because it enabled the two companies to make good progress in wool and synthetic fiber dyes.”

However, just a few years after the merger, the golden age of the Basel “chemical” industry was definitely coming to an end. As a result of increasingly fierce global competition and declining margins and earnings, chemicals finally turned from a former growth engine into a drag on growth in the portfolio of the major Basel groups.

From then on, they focused on the emerging, highly profitable pharmaceuticals sector and spun off the chemicals divisions in the 1990s into independent companies such as Clariant and Ciba Specialty Chemicals.