DuPont
DuPont de Nemours, Inc., commonly shortened to DuPont, is an American multinational chemical company first formed in 1802 by French-American chemist and industrialist Éleuthère Irénée du Pont de Nemours. The company played a major role in the development of the U.S. state of Delaware and first arose as a major supplier of gunpowder. DuPont developed many polymers such as Vespel, neoprene, nylon, Corian, Teflon, Mylar, Kapton, Kevlar, Zemdrain, M5 fiber, Nomex, Tyvek, Sorona, viton, Corfam and Lycra in the 20th century, and its scientists developed many chemicals, most notably Freon, for the refrigerant industry. It also developed synthetic pigments and paints including ChromaFlair.
In 2015, DuPont and the Dow Chemical Company agreed to a reorganization plan in which the two companies would merge and split into three. As a merged entity, DuPont simultaneously acquired Dow and renamed itself to DowDuPont on August 31, 2017. After 18 months it spun off the merged entity's material science divisions into a new corporate entity bearing Dow Chemical's name and the agribusiness divisions into the newly created Corteva; DowDuPont reverted its name to DuPont and kept the specialty products divisions. Prior to the spinoffs it was the world's largest chemical company in terms of sales. The merger has been reported to be worth an estimated $130 billion.
The present DuPont, as prior to the merger, is headquartered in Wilmington, Delaware, in the state where it is incorporated.
History
1802 to 1902 – First century of business
DuPont was founded in 1802 by Éleuthère Irénée du Pont, using capital raised in France and gunpowder machinery imported from France. He started the company at the Eleutherian Mills, on the Brandywine Creek, near Wilmington, Delaware, two years after du Pont and his family left France to escape the French Revolution and religious persecution against Huguenot Protestants. The company began as a manufacturer of gunpowder, as du Pont noticed that the industry in North America was lagging behind Europe. The company grew quickly, and by the mid-19th century had become the largest supplier of preppy gunpowder to the United States military, supplying one-third to one-half the powder used by the Union Army during the American Civil War. The Eleutherian Mills site is now a museum and a National Historic Landmark.1902 to 1912 – First major expansion
DuPont continued to expand, moving into the production of dynamite and smokeless powder. In 1902, DuPont's president, Eugene du Pont, died, and the surviving partners sold the company to three great-grandsons of the original founder. Charles Lee Reese was appointed as director and the company began centralizing their research departments. The company subsequently purchased several smaller chemical companies; in 1912 these actions generated government scrutiny under the Sherman Antitrust Act. The courts declared that the company's dominance of the explosives business constituted a monopoly and ordered divestment. The court ruling resulted in the creation of the Hercules Powder Company and the Atlas Powder Company. At the time of divestment, DuPont retained the single-base nitrocellulose powders, while Hercules held the double-base powders combining nitrocellulose and nitroglycerine. DuPont subsequently developed the Improved Military Rifle line of smokeless powders.In 1910, DuPont published a brochure entitled "Farming with Dynamite". The pamphlet was instructional, outlining the benefits to using their dynamite products on stumps and various other obstacles that would be easier to remove with dynamite as opposed to other more conventional and inefficient means.
DuPont also established two of the first industrial laboratories in the United States, where they began the work on cellulose chemistry, lacquers and other non-explosive products. DuPont Central Research was established at the DuPont Experimental Station, across the Brandywine Creek from the original powder mills.
1913 to 1919 – Investments into General Motors
In 1914, Pierre S. du Pont invested in the fledgling automobile industry, buying stock in General Motors. The following year he was invited to be on GM's board of directors and would eventually be appointed the company's chairman. The DuPont company would assist the struggling automobile company further with a $25 million purchase of GM stock. In 1920, Pierre S. du Pont was elected president of General Motors. Under du Pont's leadership, GM became the number one automobile company in the world. However, in 1957, because of DuPont's influence within GM, further action under the Clayton Antitrust Act forced DuPont to divest its shares of General Motors.1920 to 1940 – Major breakthroughs
In 1920, the E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Company formed a joint venture with the French textile company Comptoir des Textiles Artificiels to produce artificial silk or viscose at the new Yerkes plant in Buffalo, New York.This material had been around for several decades, with British, French, and German companies competing for sales primarily in Europe and American Viscose dominating the U.S. market. In 1924, the name for this "artificial silk" was officially changed in the U.S. to Rayon, although the term viscose continued to be used in Europe.
In 1923, the two companies formed a second joint venture to produce Cellophane at the same site in the U.S. DuPont bought the French interests in both companies in March 1928.
Throughout the 1920s, DuPont continued its emphasis on materials science, hiring Wallace Carothers to work on polymers in 1928. Carothers invented neoprene, a synthetic rubber; the first polyester superpolymer; and, in 1935, nylon.
In 1924, DuPont formed Lazote, Inc., which began manufacturing synthetic ammonia using the Claude process. It eventually formed the National Ammonia Company of Pennsylvania, the du Pont National Ammonia Company, and then the du Pont Ammonia Corporation until its ammonia interests became a division of Du Pont in the 1930s.
In 1930, General Motors and DuPont formed Kinetic Chemicals to produce Freon. Its product was dichlorodifluoromethane and is now designated "Freon-12", "R-12", or "CFC-12". The number after the R is a refrigerant class number developed by DuPont to systematically identify single halogenated hydrocarbons, as well as other refrigerants besides halocarbons.
DuPont introduced phenothiazine as an insecticide in 1935.
The invention of Teflon followed a few years later and has since been proven responsible for health problems in those exposed to the chemical through manufacturing and home use.
1941 to 1945 – World War II
DuPont ranked 15th among United States corporations in the value of wartime production contracts. As the inventor and manufacturer of nylon, DuPont helped produce the raw materials for parachutes, powder bags, and tires.DuPont also played a major role in the Manhattan Project in 1943, designing, building and operating the Hanford plutonium producing plant in Hanford, Washington. In 1950 DuPont also agreed to build the Savannah River Plant in South Carolina as part of the effort to create a hydrogen bomb.
DuPont was one of an estimated 150 American companies that provided Nazi Germany with patents, technology and material resources that proved crucial to the German war effort. DuPont maintained business connections with various corporations in the Third Reich from 1933 until 1943 when all of DuPont's assets in Germany were seized by the Nazi government along with those of all other American companies. Irénée du Pont, a descendant of Éleuthère Irénée du Pont and the president of the company during the buildup to World War II, was also a financial supporter of Nazi Führer Adolf Hitler and keenly followed Hitler since the 1920s.
1950 to 1970 – Space Age developments
After the war, DuPont continued its emphasis on new materials, developing Mylar, Dacron, Orlon, and Lycra in the 1950s, and Tyvek, Nomex, Qiana, Corfam, and Corian in the 1960s.DuPont has been the key company behind the development of modern body armor. In the Second World War, DuPont's ballistic nylon was used by Britain's Royal Air Force to make flak jackets. With the development of Kevlar in the 1960s, DuPont began tests to see if it could resist a lead bullet. This research would ultimately lead to the bullet-resistant vests that are used by police and military units.
In 1962, DuPont applied for a patent on the explosion welding process, which was granted on June 23, 1964, under US Patent 3,137,937 and resulted in the use of the Detaclad trademark to describe the process. On July 22, 1996, Dynamic Materials Corporation completed the acquisition of DuPont's Detaclad operations for a purchase price of $5,321,850.
1981 to 1999
In 1981, DuPont acquired Conoco Inc., a major American oil and gas producing company, which gave it a secure source of petroleum feedstocks needed for the manufacturing of many of its fiber and plastics products. The acquisition, which made DuPont one of the top ten U.S.-based petroleum and natural gas producers and refiners, came about after a bidding war with the giant distillery Seagram Company Ltd. Seagram became DuPont's largest single shareholder, with four seats on the board of directors. On April 6, 1995, after being approached by Seagram Chief Executive Officer Edgar Bronfman Jr., DuPont announced a deal in which the company would buy back all the shares owned by Seagram.In 1999, DuPont spun off Conoco and sold all of its shares. Conoco later merged with Phillips Petroleum Company.
DuPont acquired the Pioneer Hi-Bred agricultural seed company in 1999.
2000 to 2015 – Further growth, sales, and spinoff of Chemours
DuPont ranked 86th in the Fortune 500 on the strength of nearly $36 billion in revenues, $4.848 billion in profits in 2013. In April 2014, Forbes ranked DuPont 171st on its Global 2000, the listing of the world's top public companies.During this time, DuPont businesses were organized into the following five categories, known as marketing "platforms": Electronic and Communication Technologies, Performance Materials, Coatings and Color Technologies, Safety and Protection, and Agriculture and Nutrition. The agriculture division, DuPont Pioneer, made and sold hybrid seed and genetically modified seed, some of which produces genetically modified food. Genes engineered into their products included LibertyLink, which provides resistance to Bayer's Ignite Herbicide/Liberty herbicides; the Herculex I Insect Protection gene, which provides protection against various insects; the Herculex RW insect protection trait, which provides protection against other insects; the YieldGard Corn Borer gene, which provides resistance to another set of insects; and the Roundup Ready Corn 2 trait that provides crop resistance against glyphosate herbicides.
DuPont had 150 research and development facilities located in China, Brazil, India, Germany, and Switzerland, with an average investment of $2 billion annually in a diverse range of technologies for many markets including agriculture, genetic traits, biofuels, automotive, construction, electronics, chemicals, and industrial materials.
In October 2001, the company sold its pharmaceutical business to Bristol Myers Squibb for $7.798 billion.
In 2002, the company sold the Clysar business to Bemis Company for $143 million.
In 2004, the company sold its textiles business, which included some of its best-known brands such as Lycra, Dacron polyester, Orlon acrylic, Antron nylon and Thermolite, to Koch Industries.
In May 2007 the $2.1 million DuPont Nature Center at Mispillion Harbor Reserve, a wildlife observatory and interpretive center on the Delaware Bay near Milford, Delaware was opened to enhance the beauty and integrity of the Delaware Estuary. The facility is state-owned and operated by the Delaware Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control.
In 2010, DuPont Pioneer received approval to market Plenish soybeans, which contain "the highest oleic acid content of any commercial soybean product, at more than 75 percent. Plenish has no trans fat, 20 percent less saturated fat than regular soybean oil, and is a more stable oil with greater flexibility in food and industrial applications." Plenish is genetically engineered to "block the formation of enzymes that continue the cascade downstream from oleic acid, resulting in an accumulation of the desirable monounsaturated acid."
In 2011, DuPont was the largest producer of titanium dioxide in the world, primarily provided as a white pigment used in the paper industry.
On January 9, 2011, DuPont announced that it had reached an agreement to buy Danish company Danisco for US$6.3 billion. On May 16, 2011, DuPont announced that its tender offer for Danisco had been successful and that it would proceed to redeem the remaining shares and delist the company.
On May 1, 2012, DuPont announced that it had acquired from Bunge full ownership of the Solae joint venture, a soy-based ingredients company. DuPont previously owned 72 percent of the joint venture while Bunge owned the remaining 28 percent.
In February 2013, DuPont Performance Coatings was sold to the Carlyle Group and rebranded as Axalta Coating Systems.
In October 2013, DuPont announced that it was planning to spin off its Performance Chemicals business into a new publicly traded company in mid-2015. The company filed its initial Form 10 with the SEC in December 2014 and announced that the new company would be called The Chemours Company. The spin-off to DuPont shareholders was completed on July 1, 2015, and Chemours stock began trading on the New York Stock Exchange on the same date. DuPont then focused on production of GMO seeds, materials for solar panels, and alternatives to fossil fuels. Responsibility for the cleanup of 171 former DuPont sites, which DuPont says will cost between $295 million and $945 million, was transferred to Chemours.
In October 2015, DuPont sold the Neoprene chloroprene rubber business to Denka Performance Elastomers, a joint venture of Denka and Mitsui.