Fertilisers ditched as profits tumble.

Fertilisers ditched as profits tumble

ICI is to shed 640 jobs at its Billingham, Teesside, fertiliser site and sell its remaining UK fertiliser business to Kemira. The announcement comes alongside dismal financial results revealing a 21 per cent fall in group pre-tax profits for the first six months of 1990.

Kemira is to acquire for an undisclosed sum ICI's fertiliser plants at Severnside, near Bristol, and Leith, Edinburgh. ICI will thus withdraw from the European fertiliser market, but it retains a loss-making Canadian operation plus plants in Australia, India and Malaysia.

Sir Denys Henderson, the ICI chairman, said the UK fertiliser subsidiary had …