Croda and the story of Lorenzo’s oil as firm marks centenary

From humble beginnings in a disused waterworks in rural East Yorkshire, Croda International has grown into a FTSE 100 company. Now, as it celebrates its centenary, staff have been looking back on the company’s role in developing a treatment for a rare degenerative condition affecting young boys – a story retold in a Hollywood film.

On a housing estate in Hull, two streets honour the story of an American boy who developed a severe brain disease.

In 1984, Lorenzo Odone was diagnosed with adrenoleukodystrophy (ALD) and doctors predicted he would not survive childhood.

Within a year, children with the condition can become paralysed, blind and unable to speak.

But his parents refused to accept it was the end and worked tirelessly to find a treatment to improve and lengthen Lorenzo’s life.

Today, Lorenzo’s Way and Suddaby Close, in east Hull, stand testament to their efforts, which were depicted in the 1992 film Lorenzo’s Oil, starring Nick Nolte and Susan Sarandon.

So how did the city become involved?

Despite having no formal scientific training, Lorenzo’s father, Augusto, studied medicine and biochemistry and concocted a potential treatment for ALD using acids from olive and rapeseed oils.

The Odones approached Croda, which had large manufacturing plants in Hull, and the chemist Don Suddaby, who was persuaded to distil the formula. It became known as Lorenzo’s oil.

Mr Suddaby, who played himself in the film, died a year after its release.

Keith Layden worked at Croda at the time and is now a non-executive director.

“We were approached by a chap called Augusto Odone who was the father of Lorenzo, which the product is named after,” he recalls.

“And he came to us with an idea, an hypothesis, and he needed some chemistry.

“Fortunately, that request landed on the desk of a gentleman called Keith Coupland, who was the technical director at the site and Keith, in typical Croda spirit, very entrepreneurial, very creative, very innovative, said, yeah, we’ll have a crack at this. This sounds interesting.”

Mr Coupland got in touch with Mr Suddaby, who was close to retirement but agreed to take up the challenge.

“Out of that relationship came Lorenzo’s oil, Mr Layden adds. “So what started out as, let’s have a crack and see where it goes, took us took us from Hull to Hollywood in the end.”

Croda was founded in 1925 when George Crowe and Henry Dawe began producing lanolin, a waxy substance made from sheep’s wool.

Their first home was a disused waterworks in Rawcliffe Bridge, near Goole.

They soon expanded into other products and moved their headquarters to nearby Cowick Hall, a stately home in East Cowick.

Today, the house is flanked by newer laboratories and office buildings, but it is still surrounded by acres of green parkland.

The modern-day business produces ingredients for skincare, pharmaceutical, homecare and agricultural products.

At the foot of the grand staircase, Sandra Breene, president of consumer care, suggests many people will not “go a day without using a product that has some Croda ingredients in”.

At the time when Croda began developing Lorenzo’s oil, it supplied products for various industries, but did not have a healthcare or pharmaceutical division.

“It wasn’t an area that we worked in before,” Mr Layden says.

“We started thinking about how our materials could be used in those sorts of areas.

“There was a lot of euphoria in Croda with the film coming out. And so we decided to set up a healthcare division of Croda about 1997 and over the last 30 years that’s become a very significant part of our business.

“We had some significant successes which have benefited many hundreds of millions of people, most noticeably few years ago during the Covid pandemic where we were an integral part of the production and manufacture of the first MRNA-based vaccine.”

Ms Breene, a graduate of the University of Hull, said she was sad to hear the institution had decided to close its chemistry department.

“We need to ensure that our universities continue to provide us with that pipeline of young people to come into the industry,” she added.

Lorenzo Odone died in 2008, having lived 20 years longer than originally predicted.

Even from the beginning, questions were asked about the efficacy of Lorenzo’s oil for patients who already had the disease.

Scientific studies showed it did not seem to work for people who were already ill, but it did seem to help prevent illness in those whose genes made them vulnerable to developing symptoms.

Alex TLC, a British leukodystrophy charity, says the available evidence shows that Lorenzo’s oil is not a proven preventative, but may be beneficial for boys with asymptomatic ALD.

The treatment is still produced today.

“Fortunately, it’s a very rare disease,” Mr Layden says. “So it was never going to be a commercially attractive proposition to Croda, but we did it because we felt it was the right thing to do.

“As a FTSE 100 company, there’s a lot of focus on the financial metrics.

“But as employees, you need more than that. You need more of a purpose.”

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