Union Carbide India Limited

Union Carbide India Limited
Founded1934 (1934)
FateRenamed Eveready Industries India in 1994
Headquarters
India
Products
  • Batteries
  • Carbon products
  • Welding equipment
  • Plastics
  • Industrial chemicals
  • Pesticides
  • Marine products
Number of employees
9,000 (1994)

Union Carbide India Limited (UCIL) was a chemical company founded in 1934. UCIL employed 9,000 people.[1][2] UCIL was 50.9% owned by Union Carbide and Carbon Corporation (UCC) located in the United States and 49.1% by Indian investors including the Government of India and government-controlled banks.[3]

UCIL produced batteries, carbon products, welding equipment, plastics, industrial chemicals, pesticides and marine products. In 1984, a gas leak occurred at a UCIL facility located in Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh, that was responsible for manufacturing various chemical products, primarily pesticides.[4] The incident killed thousands of people, and harmed hundreds of thousands more by causing chronic illnesses.[4] At the time of the disaster, UCIL was ranked twenty-first in size among companies operating in India. It had revenues of ₹2 billion (then equivalent to US$170 million).

The formation of the pesticides and herbicides that were produced by Union Carbide was from carbaryl which is used as a base chemical in order to react with methyl isocyanate and alpha naphthol.[4] In 1970, there was an issue with the methyl isocyanate unit being built (MIC) in Bhopal. The issue was due to the location of the unit which was nearby a railroad station and a heavily populated area.[4]

  1. ^ "History of UCIL". Retrieved 5 May 2008.
  2. ^ "Bhopal: The World's Worst Industrial Disaster, 30 Years Later". The Atlantic. 2 December 2014. Retrieved 6 January 2017.
  3. ^ S. Tamer Cavusgil; Gary Knight; John R. Riesenberger; Hussain G. Rammal; Elizabeth L. Rose (2014). International Business. Pearson Australia. p. 141. ISBN 978-1-4860-1138-4.
  4. ^ a b c d "Bhopal: Vulnerability, Routinization, and the Chronic Disaster", The Angry Earth, Routledge, pp. 271–291, 1 November 1999, doi:10.4324/9780203821190-24, ISBN 978-0-429-23648-8