Thursday 28 April 2011

The real reason Octel Amlwch closed

In his latest missive Paul Williams aka 'The Druid' thinks it beneficial to mention Octel and its closure in 2005 with a loss of 105 jobs.

As he says “Well known companies which survived the recession of the 1980s and 90s, which have provided stable, well paid work for generations of Islanders have in recent years closed in rapid succession”.

Octel is first on his list, following the above statement see: Seven days to go:

Octel produced ‘bromide’ an additive for leaded petrol, to stop ‘knocking’, and after the introduction of Lead Replacement Petrol (LRP) the need for bromide was significantly reduced.

Therefore the real reason Octel Amlwch closed was the complete collapse in the price of bromide which made production at Amlwch uneconomical.

In other words, the world moved on, with what is claimed safer fuels being produced. None of this had anything to do with the Welsh Assembly - therefore why Paul Williams is keen to mention this company is really lost on us?

1 comment:

Photon said...

Paul is doing what most others do: use smoke and mirrors to try an dpersuade us, sheep-like, that the "new man" (for it is almost always still men) will make any difference.

A tory should know better: the free market is free of political influence.

The price collapse also made the Dead Sea a much more economical source of bromine - see this image of evaporation pans:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/30/STS028-96-65.jpg