The Gossage Soap Company
After their enormous success with silicated soap, the company faced a new threat from 1884. This was William Hesketh Lever's Sunlight soap. The new Sunlight was a technical and commercial novelty. Gossage's response was to produce their own similar soap, also wrapped, branded and advertised. This was 'Magical', whose logo included a wizard, and mystical symbols, such as crescent moons. This was successful, but other competitors also entered the market, such as Crosfields of Warrington and Hazelhursts of Runcorn. In the early 1900s Lever's empire purchased Hudson's soap flake business. Hudson's soap flakes had been made under contract by Gossage's. Lever moved production to Port Sunlight. Gossages soon produced an own brand soap flake. Unfortunately, Lever claimed they were using Hudson's (now Lever's) proprietary recipes- and sued the Gossage company. The resulting law suit damaged Gossage's finances and reputation. In 1910-1911, they were taken over by the Bruner-Mond company, alkali makers. During the Great War (1914-18) the company produced glycerine for the war effort. In peacetime, competition resumed. Brunner-Mond sold Gossages and other soap companies to Lever, under an agreement: they would exit the soap market, and Lever would not make his own alkali, instead buying it from Brunner-Mond at preferable rates. So, by 1923, after complex negotiations, the Gossage factory became a Lever property. By 1932, Lever Bros had joined with the Margarine Union of the Netherlands to form Unilever. By that year, 'Magical', and other brands were basically slight variants of 'Sunlight'. So, rationalisation meant the closure of the Widnes plant, and concentration of soap production at Port Sunlight. The factory was demolished, save for the office buildings, which lay derelict for many years. From the 1980s they have formed the core of Catalyst Museum of the Chemical Industry. The waste ground near the Gossage Buildings formed the site of the Spike Island Festival of 1990.
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