Little we own or do today would be possible without plastics. But the development of plastic only happened in the past 50 years, and did not become established until after the Second World War. Frances Griss charts the history of a company at the forefront of the plastics revolution - Hydro Polymers

The Second World War saw an employment boom in what became Newton Aycliffe, with the establishment of a major arms factory.

But with the war over, the government had to find other uses for the factory.

Fortunately for the workforce, the war had seen great advances in plastics and a company called Bakelite was ready to exploit the new opportunities. It announced it would be moving to County Durham in September 1945.

The move was welcomed by wartime employees and soldiers returning to civvie street and needing work.

Many made the transition from the explosives production lines to plastics manufacturing.

Equipment was moved into the buildings and the production of polyvinyl chloride - better known as PVC - began.

The first PVC compounding unit at the plant operated until the late 1980s - even though, 40 years earlier, it was only intended as a temporary production facility.

Because products and processes were constantly changing, the workforce had to be flexible. That flexibility was tested during the famously cold winter of 1947.

Coal supplies for the boiler were dwindling, so the nightshift was moved from Aycliffe to Cornforth Pit, where they dug coal out of the frozen stock piles to keep the factory running.

Growth in the world plastics market was continuing apace, and the Aycliffe factory needed to increase production. In 1951, work began on a £1m PVC manufacturing plant.

Bakelite had another business in Tyseley, near Birmingham, where the prevailing culture was more formal than at Aycliffe.

John Baldwin, who started working for the company in 1969 said: "I was employed by the Tyseley HQ, but worked at Aycliffe. I quickly found that the world was divided into two types of people - those at Tyseley, who were seen as a bit old fashioned, and the more relaxed people at Aycliffe.

"The plant at Aycliffe worked incredibly hard and well, and they all worked well together.

"You had to remember if any of the bosses came up from Tyseley to put on your formality."

Dr Baldwin retired in 1996 and wrote a history of the company.

Over the years, the Aycliffe works expanded constantly, increasing production and making an ever-widening range of products.

In the early 1970s, Union Carbide, Bakelite's parent company, wanted to concentrate on polyethylene rather than PVC and looked for a buyer for the PVC business. British Industrial Plastics, a subsidiary of Turner and Newell, was interested and took over in 1974, at the same time installing a new plant to make 50,000 tons a year.

Newton Aycliffe had always bought in its raw material - vinyl chloride - from ICI, but changes in the market meant the two companies were in direct competition and the situation was no longer tenable, so new sources had to be found.

Supplies started to come from Dutch company Akzo and the Norwegian Norsk Hydro, both of which sent the product by sea to Seal Sands, on Teesside.

By the 1980s, Turner and Newell was looking for a way out of PVC manufacturing and sold the Aycliffe business to one of its suppliers - Norsk Hydro Polymers, which became Hydro Polymers.

In the 1990s, the factory started holding open days.

Dr Baldwin said: "The first thing that struck people was that there was so much green inside the factory. They expected to see more people about than there were and they expected to see more dirt and filth."

In fact, the site has much open space thanks to its history as a munitions factory, when buildings had open space between them to minimise the effects of accidental explosions.

Hydro Polymers employs 400 people at Newton Aycliffe. This year, the parent company is celebrating its centenary, with chief executive Eivind Reiten confident the company is facing the future on a solid financial footing.