History
The current Grimsby site was originally farmland acquired by Courtaulds Ltd in 1952 to build a Viscose fibre operation. The initial phase of a power station was built in 1956 to supply the planned Viscose operation, which opened in 1957.
In 1959, Courtaulds started the Courtelle/Acrylic South Factory on the Grimsby site to make carpet fibre. During the mid 1960’s the business was expanded with the commissioning of the North West (lines G to L), followed a few years later by the North East factory (lines R to W). The West factory was commissioned in 1973 which took the acrylic capacity to approximately 80,000 tonnes per annum.
In the early 1960's Courtaulds, Morgan Crucible and the Ministry of Defence (MoD) started a joint development programme to turn the batch process for the carbonisation of acrylic fibre into a continuous process. In 1963, they successfully developed this process and consequently started the carbon fibre industry and demand for acrylic fibre precursor.
In 1976, Courtaulds realised that there was a market for an independent source of carbon fibre precursor and started manufacture of this heavy tow (textile tow) precursor in Grimsby (25 tonnes in 1976). Over the next 20 years, the demand for an independent source of precursor grew and so did the number of customers as new markets evolved, like carbon carbon brakes, aircraft insulation, short cut carbon fibre, flame retardant fibres and continuous carbon fibre.
In 1998, following a period of financial difficulties, Courtaulds accepted a friendly takeover bid from Akzo Nobel. As a consequence the Grimsby acrylic operation (Courtelle) became Acordis UK Ltd.
In December 2006, the precursor business was acquired and re-named Bluestar Fibres Company Ltd.
In April 2007 Technical Absorbents Ltd became a wholly owned subsidiary of Bluestar Fibres Limited.
