Johnson Matthey

Johnson Matthey enters into joint venture with Tanaka Kikinzoku Kogyo KK of Japan to form Tanaka Matthey KK. Johnson Matthey joins Cookson Group PLC to form Cookson Matthey Ceramics plc. Johnson Matthey PLC has been involved in the processing and marketing of precious metals since its founding in 1817. Although it is most widely known for its activities in platinum--it is a world leader in the refining, marketing, and technological development of the metal--Johnson Matthey has been increasingly positioning itself as a leader in advanced materials technology, including catalysts and pollution control systems, electronic materials, specialty chemicals, and pharmaceutical compounds. Johnson Matthey also manufactures decorative and specialized materials for the ceramics, plastics, paint, ink, and construction industries. In 2001 the company acquired British pharmaceutical firm Meconic, becoming the only company in the United Kingdom legally authorized to sell medical heroin and cocaine. Johnson Matthey has an extensive international presence, with operations in 34 countries. The founder of Johnson Matthey was Percival Johnson, who in 1817 set himself up at 79 Hatton Garden in Holborn, London, as an "Assayer and Practical Mineralogist." As such, he valued gold by applying chemical and physical tests to determine the exact quantity of gold in a bar. Johnson's business rapidly gained distinction when he began offering to buy back the bars of gold that he assayed, thereby becoming the first London assayer to issue a guarantee of quality. In the early 1830s a small gold refinery was built at the Hatton Garden premises for the refining and assaying of gold bars that were then coming into London from Brazil. These were complex gold bars, containing impurities that were not easy to remove. Having successfully extracted platinum group metals from the bars and proven his technical prowess, Johnson established the firm at the forefront of the London bullion market. The firm took full advantage of the gold rushes of California, from 1848, and of Australia, from 1851, while supplies of silver arrived throughout the 1850s and 1860s in the form of demonetized silver coinage--coinage that had gone out of circulation--from European states. A large-scale silver refinery was built at adjacent premises in Hatton Garden. Johnson's interest in metallurgy had already brought him into contact with platinum, which had been the subject of considerable scientific interest throughout the early 19th century because of its strength and resistance to corrosive acids. He set up a small-scale refinery for the metal at Hatton Garden, with limited supplies coming from Colombia. In 1838 George Matthey joined the company as an apprentice. Matthey's scientific talents, coupled with a shrewd business sense, were the driving force behind the company's development in the platinum industry during the second half of the 19th century. When the Great Exhibition was first proposed, Matthey persuaded Johnson to exhibit a number of platinum articles, together with specimens of other platinum group metals: palladium, iridium, and rhodium. The display was a success, and Matthey became determined to make the company preeminent in the platinum business. He succeeded in gaining a more assured supply of the metal through direct arrangements with owners of a mine in the Ural mountains in Russia, then a newly discovered source. In the 1867 International Exhibition in Paris, the company displayed a wide variety of platinum-manufactured goods on a scale never seen before. The exhibit was awarded a gold medal "for perfection and improvement in the working of platinum." Under Matthey's direction, platinum refining and fabricating grew from about 15,000 ounces in 1860 to about 75,000 ounces a year in the 1880s. The manufacturing of sulfuric acid boilers was the largest single use of platinum until the early 1900s. The diversity of the company had actually been established from the beg