Foundation The business was established by
Edward Packard, one of the first to manufacture
superphosphate derived from
coprolites, in 1843. In 1863 he was joined in business by his son, also named
Edward, who was instrumental in developing the business and rationalising the United Kingdom's fertiliser industry. The business was incorporated in 1895 under the name of
Edward Packard and Company Limited. helicopter used in 1955 by Fison-Airwork to demonstrate the use of aerial crop spraying The Company formally changed its name to the shorter
Fisons Ltd in 1942. Fisons owned parts of the
Somerset Levels, where they extracted
peat. In 1970 one of their staff, Ray Sweet, discovered the remains of a
timber trackway. It has been dated to 3807 or 3806 BC, and is now known as the
Sweet Track. A portion is now in the collection of the
British Museum. The company formed Nypro UK in December 1964, with
Dutch State Mines. Fisons owned 24%.
Switch to pharmaceuticals In the early 1980s the company decided to focus on pharmaceutical products and its fertiliser activities were sold to
Norsk Hydro in 1982. In the 1990s Fisons was targeted by the UK
Earth Liberation Front, who caused nearly $100,000 in damage during a "night of action" in retaliation for Fisons' draining
peat bogs in the English countryside. Many years of successful growth were financed by sales of
sodium cromoglycate in a variety of formulations used to treat
asthma and allergies of the eye among several disease areas. However, the loss of lucrative product licences for
Opticrom and
Imferon in the US in 1991 and the failure of clinical trials for
Tipredane, an asthma drug, in 1993 revealed bleak prospects for the business. In early 1995 the Instruments Division was sold to US Thermo Instrument Systems while the
Research and Development facilities in
Loughborough and
Rochester, New York, with their pipelines were acquired by the
Swedish company
Astra AB.
Acquisition In late 1995 Fisons was acquired by the United States–based Rhone-Poulenc Rorer, Inc., which in turn was wholly owned by France's chemical giant
Rhône-Poulenc S.A. ==Operations==