Farbwerke Hoechst Company

So, too, the dyestuff maker, Farbwerke vorm. Meister Lucius Briining (Hoechst) found in America a loyal agent, who in time became very much part of the Hoechst "family." At first, Hoechst used independent agents, one of which had in 1882 employed the 15-year old American-born Herman Metz. From the 1880s until his death in 1934, Metz was associated with Hoechst and then LG. Farben—a half century relationship. And with Hoechst, as with Bayer and Badische, there was the same pattern, first Hoechst used independent agents and then owned sales outlets. Metz s letterhead in 1914 showed him to be president of Farbwerke Hoechst Company, New York, with branches in Boston, Philadelphia, Providence, Chicago, Charlotte, Atlanta, San Francisco, and Newark. In Newark, Hoechst had a small factory, that represented roughly 2 to 3 percent of U.S. dyestuff production. ... 

The first commercially available acetal resin was marketed by Du Pont in 1959 under the trade name Delrin after the equivalent of ten million pounds had been spent in research or polymers of formaldehyde. The Du Pont monopoly was unusually short lived as Celcon, as acetal copolymer produced by the Celanese Corporation, became available in small quantities in 1960. This material became commercially available in 1962 and later in the same year Farbwerke Hoechst combined with Celanese to produce similar products in Germany (Hostaform). In 1963 Celanese also combined with the Dainippon Celluloid Company of Osaka, Japan and Imperial Chemical Industries to produce acetal copolymers in Japan and Britain respectively under the trade names Duracon and Alkon (later changed to Kematal). In the early 1970s Ultraform GmbH (a joint venture of BASF and Degussa) introduced a copolymer under the name Ultraform and the Japanese company Asahi Chemical a homopolymer under the name Tenal. 

The naming of this process has been confused because of various corporate relationships. The basic invention was created in 1957 at the Consortium fur Elektrochemische Industrie, Munich, a wholly owned subsidiary of Wacker-Chemie. It has therefore been called both the Wacker process and the Consortium process. But for many years, Wacker-Chemie has had a close relationship with Farbwerke Hoechst and the latter company has participated in some of the development and licensing activities, so two other names have come to be used Wacker-Hoechst and Hoechst-Wacker. The live inventors (J. Schmidt, W. Hafner, J. Sedlmeier, R. Jira, and R. Riittinger) received the Dechema prize in 1962 for this invention. The acetaldehyde process was first operated commercially in 1960. In 1997, this process was used in making 85 percent of the world s production of acetaldehyde. Although Wacker-Chemie still makes vinyl acetate, it no longer uses the Wacker process to do so. 

The liquid-phase oxidation of ethylene to acetaldehyde was pioneered by the Consortium fiir Elektrochemische Industrie G.m.b.H. Industrially, the single-stage process was developed mainly by Farbwerke Hoechst A. G. and the two-stage process by Wacker Chemie G.m.b.H. itself. Both processes are licensed by Aldehyd G.m.b.H., jointly owned by Wacker Chemie G.m.b.H. and Farbwerke Hoechst G.m.b.H. The basic patents of these two companies on the Wacker process are listed in Table IV. In addition to these patents, which have given Wacker Chemie G.m.b.H. and Farbwerke Hoechst a dominant role in this field, other companies hold some patents in this area (Table X). How many of the patents listed in Tables IX and X are commercially important cannot be judged, based on the open literature alone. 

The companies of the "bigger I.G.", founded in 1916 (BASF, Bayer, Agfa, Farbwerke Hoechst, Casella Co., and Kalle Co. as well as the Chemische Fabrik Griesheim-Elektron und Chemische Fabrik vorm Weilerter Meer), produced in 1917 about 77% of the explosives in Germany. Bayer, with 39%, was the biggest producer. The turnover of the companies belonging to the I.G. increased from 559 million marks in 1913 to 1616 million marks in 1918, and for war material from 2% of the turnover to 46% in 1917. ... 

The use of the successful "Ziegler Catalyst" i.e. titanium chloride and triethylaluminum for producii linear polyethylene (HDPE) at ordinaiy temperature and pressure was licensed by Ziegler to Petrochemicals LTD in England (now owned by Shell), Montecatini (now Montedison) in Italy, Farbwerke Hoechst and Hercules in the U.S. Hercules and Stauffer formed a company, Texas Alkyls for the production of Ziegler catalysts. 

Ostwald offered the process to the Farbwerke Hoechst, noting that commercialization of the process would remove the threat of an English naval blockade denying Germany access to Chilean nitrates in the case of a war/ As soon as Ostwald s attempt to patent the process became known in 1903, BASF disputed the claim. The company pointed out that the reaction was first described by Charles Frederic Kuhlmann (1803-1881) in 1838, and then in many of his subsequent papers, and it also noted its own research in related areas of high-temperature catalysis. In April 1907 Ostwald was forced to withdraw his claim. By the time BASF decided to go ahead with the oxidation there were no legal problems, but it still had to find a cheaper catalyst. 

I.G. Farbenindustrie Aktien Geselsheft G.B. Patent No. 253,950 Sept. 22 1927 Assigned to Farbwerke, vorm. Meister Lucius and Bruning, a German company, of Hoechst a/Main, Germany... 

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