In 1918, the American Cellulose & Chemical Manufacturing Company (known as Amcelle) was founded in
New York City by Swiss chemist
Camille Dreyfus. The American Cellulose and Chemical Manufacturing Co. Ltd plant in
Cumberland, Maryland, originated in 1918 during
World War I to produce cheaper fabric for airplane manufacturing. The plant location was chosen inland to protect against potential
Zeppelin attacks. It was also situated in proximity to a ready source of water at the
Potomac River and easy access to coal supplies and railroad lines. After a series of delays, production began on Christmas Day, 1924 with a series of
cellulose acetate commercial fabrics and yarns intended as alternatives to
silk. The plant closed in 1983, and was later torn down to provide a space for a new
state prison. The company introduced the word "Celanese", a
combination of "cellulose" and "ease" in 1925, seeking to promote the ease of cleaning and care of their acetate yarn, or artificial silk, fabrics. They officially took this name in 1927, becoming Celanese Corporation of America.
After World War II In 1947, Celanese started producing acetate fiber at its plant near
Ocotlán, Jalisco, Mexico. This plant closed in 2019. By 1958, Celanese had 13 domestic plants, three
research and development centers, some 30 groups of products, and approximately 13,000 employees. In 1959, Celanese commissioned
Edward Durell Stone, a 20th-century American
architect, to build the "
Celanese House", a model home in
New Canaan, Connecticut, to showcase the company's new materials and styles. Celanese bought certain operations of the British chemicals firm
Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI) in 1982. This included the Fiber Industries Incorporated plant in
Salisbury, North Carolina, which became part of
Invista in 2004. In 1983, Celanese built a $20 million plant in
Rock Hill, South Carolina, to produce
polybenzimidazole (PBI), a material used to fabricate high-performance protective apparel used in
firefighters' gear and
astronaut space suits. Celanese
spun off its pharmaceutical business as
Celgene in 1986. In 1987,
Hoechst AG acquired Celanese Corporation and merged it with its American subsidiary, American Hoechst, to form Hoechst Celanese Corporation. In 1989, Hoechst Celanese moved to buy out the remaining shareholders of
Hoechst Celanese Canada and thus to fully privatize the Canadian unit in a deal worth $210 million. In 1998, in a $2.7 billion deal, Hoechst Celanese sold its Trevira division to a consortium between
Houston-based KoSa, a joint venture of
Koch Industries, IMASAB S.A., and
Grupo Xtra, both of Mexico. Also in 1998, Hoechst combined most of its industrial-chemical operations into a new company, Celanese AG. In 1999, Hoechst spun off Celanese AG as a publicly-traded German corporation,
cross-listed on both the
Frankfurt and
New York stock exchanges as "CZZ" and "CZ", respectively. This was done in a vast corporate restructuring associated with the parent's merger with
Rhone-Poulenc.
2000- present On December 16, 2003, the U.S.
private-equity firm Blackstone Group announced a
takeover offer for Celanese, after two years of wooing management. Shareholders formally approved the offer from Blackstone on 16 June 2004, and Blackstone completed the acquisition of Celanese AG. The company was delisted from the
New York Stock Exchange, and Blackstone changed the entity's name back to "Celanese Corporation". Under Blackstone, a number of streamlining initiatives were undertaken, and several acquisitions were made. On January 21, 2005, Celanese Corporation conducted an
initial public offering and became a publicly-traded corporation traded on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol "CE". When Blackstone sold the last of its shares in 2007, it had made five times what it had invested: Blackstone and its co-investors collected a $2.9 billion profit. In June 2009, the company sold its
polyvinyl alcohol (PVOH) business to
Sekisui Chemical Co., Ltd. Celanese had a
process to make
ethanol from
natural gas. During 2018 Celanese, along with 90 additional
Fortune 500 companies, "paid an effective federal tax rate of 0% or less" as a result of
Donald Trump's
Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017. In late 2020, Celanese sold their 45% stake in Polyplastics to
Daicel, who already owned 55% of the company. This transaction resulted in Daicel attaining full ownership of Polyplastics.
Class-action lawsuits In 1985, Hoechst Celanese was named (along with
Shell Oil and
US Brass) as a defendant in a class action lawsuit for $7 billion in both past and potential future damages for which they were accused of being liable because of leaks in their
polybutylene (PB) plumbing-systems. The lawsuit alleged a complex scheme to mislead buyers into believing that PB plumbing systems were suitable for use as distribution systems for
potable water and purportedly enjoying a lifetime of 50 years' service. According to the lawsuit, scientists from the defendants allegedly reported that the PB plumbing systems would degrade even when exposed to low concentrations of chlorine typically found in municipal water-systems. The lawsuit claimed that in spite of this knowledge, the defendants concealed the information and continued to market these products (Shell supplying PB resins to water-pipe manufacturers and Hoechst Celanese providing acetal resins to manufacturers of pipe-fittings) until approximately 1996. The lawsuit was settled in 1995 for . In January 2014, a class-action lawsuit was filed on behalf of the citizens of Cannon's Campground, seeking relief from health and environmental dangers posed by groundwater and surface-water contamination emanating from the Hoechst-Celanese manufacturing-plant in
Spartanburg, South Carolina. The lawsuit alleged the dumping of a number of toxic chemicals into local waters, thus diminishing property-values and causing a number of illnesses. Hoechst Celanese asked the courts to dismiss these charges as spurious, claiming that its discharges have not caused substantial harm to anyone or to the environment, and further asserting that a 3-year limit on
tort claims had expired, relieving the company of any responsibility for damages which might be eventually discovered. == Products ==