Written on: January 9, 2015 by SprayTM
DuPont Fluorochemicals recently announced that it has sold the global marketing, sales and distribution rights for its Dymel Pharmaceutical Propellants businesses to companies more strategically aligned with this unique market segment. This DuPont Fluorochemicals business is part of the Performance Chemicals segment that DuPont anticipates separating by mid-2015. The sale was specifically limited to its regulated pharmaceutical products, HFC-134a/P and HFC-227ea/P, and excluded all merchant or industrial grades of these products. The sale also excluded manufacturing assets.
DuPont Fluorochemicals will continue as a supplier of HFC 152a, dimethyl ether (DME), HFC 134a and HFC 227ea businesses.
According to the company, DuPont Fluorochemicals is making this move to enable a stronger focus on developing and commercializing the company’s new family of products based on hydrofluoroolefins (HFOs), which have very low global warming potential compared to the products they are designed to replace.
After completing the sale transition, DuPont will also exit use of the Dymel brand and will pursue plans for rebranding its HFC-152a and dimethylether propellant products consistent with commercialization of the company’s new family of low global warming products.
Additionally, DuPont intends to spin off a new performance chemical company, ranked among the largest in the U.S., with the new name of Chemours, a nod to DuPont’s full name, E. I. du Pont de Nemours & Co. The firm will occupy a building in Wilmington, DE that DuPont, after more than 100 years, is vacating. DuPont shareholders will be entitled to shares in Chemours.
Chemours’s biggest business, the white pigment titanium dioxide, makes up 46% of sales. Fluoroproducts account for 36% of sales. The rest of Chemours’s businesses are in sodium cyanide, sulfuric acid, aniline, and other chemicals.
DuPont announced its intention to spin off the performance chemicals business in 2013 as part of a plan to focus on biotechnology, agriculture, electronic materials, and other endeavors that are high growth and technology intensive. DuPont will also exit the city of Wilmington, where it has been headquartered for more than a century. The company is moving its base to Chestnut Run, DE where it opened a 220,000-sq-ft office building in 2012.
