Originally a chemical plant, it has businesses in a variety of fields including energy generation, plastic recycling and process research.

Following the fragmentation of ICI, the owner of the site since 1995, Enron owned the facility briefly before it was acquired by Sembcorp Industries, a Singapore company.

[7] Huntsman manufacture polyurethane intermediates and Ensus built their bioethanol facility in 2009, which at the time was the largest of its type in the United Kingdom.

The complex is one of the largest R&D facilities in Europe and is home to the Centre for Process Innovation (CPI), part of the Technology Strategy Board's High Value Manufacturing Catapult network.

[11] The site has laboratories and scale-up facilities for the chemistry-using process industries, that are accessed by many companies on a commercial or contract basis.