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Company History

Scroll through the events of Innospec's history below, dating back from 1938 to the present day.

Our Innospec locations have varied over the years, forming one great Innospec adventure that branches out in more ways than one. One thing our collective company history has had to offer is our passionate drive for specialty chemicals. Our company expansion has evolved over time, making us the leading global specialty company we are today. We’ve learned a lot, and we pride ourselves on our talent, drive and expertise to guide our customers to success in highly competitive markets with our fast-response work ethic.

We’ve also kept up with new technologies over the years to remain advanced amongst competitors. This modern and ahead-of-the-game work ethic benefits our customers by improving their product offering and operations. We prioritize our customer service and technical support while providing innovative and unique product offerings. Our capabilities (both on a global scale and locally) allow us to keep on top of being dynamic when facing our customer’s needs, while maintaining a product and service offering of the highest quality. Our team at Innospec are (and always has been) dedicated to finding dynamic and productive solutions to suit the customer’s needs. Discover where we’ve been, where we are, and where we’re going in our Company Timeline below. If you’d like to find out more? Contact us today, and one of our team will be happy to help.

1938
  • ICI began manufacture of tetraethyl lead (TEL) at Northwich,
  • Cheshire French affiliate established
1948
  • Associated Ethyl Co Ltd (forerunner to Associated Octel) acquired by Shell, BP, Texaco, Mobil and Chevron
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1970
  • Continuing decline of TEL following introduction of US Clean Air Act
1985
  • Development of Octel Petroleum Specialties business
1989
  • Great Lakes acquires controlling interest in Associated Octel
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1994
  • Associated Octel purchases E. I. du Pont petroleum additives business
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1998
  • Spin-off from Great Lakes
  • Octel Corp. listed on NYSE, May 1998
  • Purchase of Octel Deutschland GmbH (Pluto)
  • TEL Marketing Alliance with Ethyl Corp.
1999
  • Joint venture Octel Starreon formed
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2001
  • Acquisition of:
    • Gamlen Industries SA
    • CP3500 companies
    • Bycosin AB
2004
  • Purchase of remaining 50% of Octel Starreon
  • Purchase of Leuna Polymer
  • Acquired privately held Finetex (US)
2005
  • Formation of global fuel additives business
  • Acquired ProChem (US)
2006
  • Company renamed
  • Move from NYSE to NASDAQ
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2012
  • Acquired Strata Control Services
2013
  • Acquired Bachman Services
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2014
  • Acquired Independence Oilfield Chemicals
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2016
  • Acquired in 2016 Huntsman (Europe)
2017
  • Acquired BioSuite
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