In September 2002, Johnson Matthey acquired catalyst sompany Synetix, in Billingham, and renamed it Johnson Matthey Catalysts. Business Editor Mike Parker went to see Teesside's contribution to global business.

THE contrast could not be more stark. Across the road from the derelict shell that was once Billingham House, headquarters of ICI's fertilizers division, stands the pristine premises of one of the world's leading centres of research excellence.

While Billingham House - burnt-out in parts and windows gone - will soon be reborn as a garden centre (which seems appropriate considering its previous existence), a growth story of an altogether different kind is taking place behind the forbidding railings of the Johnson Matthey Catalysts (JMC) site.

The buildings, laboratories and offices hide technology that touches daily life at every level.

Roger Kilburn, JMC vice-president of the Polymers, Chemicals and Edible Oils division, said: "Anything you pick up, anything you do, the chemicals industry is involved."

Wash your hair in the morning and the chances are that JMC's products were used to make the shampoo. Open a bag of crisps and you will encounter more JMC innovation - its catalysts are used to make ink stick to plastic wrappers. Take a trip to McDonald's and its innovations are used in the frying fat.

Step into your car and you will make good use of another of JMC's products - albeit manufactured at its sister site in Royston, Cambridgeshire - the catalytic converter.

For the sweet-toothed, JMC deserves a special mention. It manufactures the melt in your mouth, not in your hand technology that allowed chocolate makers to bring confectionery like M&Ms and Minstrels to the market.

DIY enthusiasts also have cause to be grateful. Catalysts are used to make solid emulsion - paint that is rigid in the tin but can be brushed on to walls in the home before becoming rigid again.

JMC began as a subsidiary of ICI. Synetix was created in 1998 and, to all intents and purposes, was an independent company within the chemicals group, with its own production and back room support.

A rapidly consolidating catalysts market made it an obvious target and when, in September 2002, Johnson Matthey announced it had bought Synetix for £260m, no one was too surprised.

Synetix was a successful business in its own right and, under Johnson Matthey, has grown in strength.

The workforce has increased by 50 in the past 18 months taking the total number of staff working in Billingham to 450, fewer than 20 per cent of whom are involved in manufacturing. To improve its capacity and capabilities, £5m has been invested in the plant in the past 12 months.

The Teesside operation is the research and technical centre for the Process Catalysts and Technologies division of JMC, which has 2,100 employees worldwide and manufactures catalysts at Billingham, Royston and Clitheroe in the UK, as well as in the US, Germany, India and China.

Being part of the Johnson Matthey stable of companies has in turn made the catalysts operation part of a bigger global force. Messrs Johnson and Matthey founded the company in 1817 as an assaying business, testing gold to check its purity, and became the official assayer for the Bank of England.

While the precious metals element of the business has remained a thread running through the group, Johnson Matthey has grown to become a global speciality chemicals company and features in the FTSE 100 Index of leading companies. It employs 8,000 staff in 34 countries.

For the Billingham employees, the changes have meant they are part of a much bigger operation. Ben Jenkinson, human resources director, said: "This has been good for our employees. We have come from being in ICI, where there wasn't masses of cash for growth, to a business that has put catalysts at its core. Johnson Matthey is very keen to invest and is also fairly acquisitive. In ICI, we were on the fringes - that is no longer the case.

"It is a success story, which is very gratifying because it could have been a lot different depending on who acquired us."

The company believes it has taken the necessary precautions to prepare for the inevitable onslaught from the Far East. While establishing manufacturing and sales sites in India and China, it has also concentrated on maintaining a lean and effective business.

Mr Kilburn said: "We have to be aware that there are some significant and growing competitors in Asia. It is very, very tough, and our response has to be to get a smaller cost base. You need to look at moving manufacturing to these places, but not your core technology, such as we have in the North-East."

But it is not only about global markets and a global outlook.

Mr Jenkinson said: "It is not necessarily the product, it is the people that give us that added value. Intellectual capacity is the key - it is world-class employees. We have talent recruited globally that we bring to the North-East."

JMC is looking locally for the talent of the future to fill highly-skilled, highly-paid jobs. It has started a range of information programmes for children from primary school age and above to try to inspire the next generation of scientists and technicians needed to give the company the competitive edge it will need.

Mr Kilburn's plan is simple: "We are hoping we are creating the Nobel Prize winners of the future. It is about generating that interest and keeping that interest."

The company works with the region's universities to keep that talent in the North-East, which makes commercial sense - according to the latest estimates, there are 500,000 fewer graduates coming out of European universities than five years ago.

"That is a big concern for us," he said. "If we do not have the students coming out of the universities, then there is an issue to address."

The company's continued success will help it to attract emerging scientific talent. While some bemoan the loss of North-East graduates to other areas of the UK and abroad, JMC believes it has the status to keep the best the region can produce.

Mr Kilburn said: "The acquisition moved this from being a North-East-based business into a global business. The message we want to send is that we are still in the North-East and we are growing in the North-East. The fact we have created 50 jobs in the past 18 months is testament to that."