Thomas Swan & Co. Limited

Thomas Swan & Co. Limited is a family-owned chemical manufacturer founded in 1926 in Consett, County Durham, growing out of a mixing plant that Tommy Swan had set up at the Crookhall Works six years earlier. Now run by the fourth generation of the Swan family, the company reaches its centenary in 2026 having grown from a local additives supplier into an international manufacturer of performance and specialty chemicals, while remaining headquartered and manufacturing at its original Consett site.

The business is organised into two divisions: Performance Chemicals, which supplies additives, actives, resins and preservatives into personal care, home care, rubber, coatings, textile and paper markets, and Custom Manufacture, which provides confidential contract and toll synthesis for third-party customers. In 2004 Thomas Swan became the first UK company to produce commercial quantities of single-wall carbon nanotubes, developed with the University of Cambridge. Supported by offices in the USA, Germany and China, it now distributes to more than 80 countries.