DuPont Company

• Date Founded: 1802
• Industry: Diversified—Chemicals, Agribusiness, Materials Science, Nutrition
• Corporate Headquarters: Wilmington, Delaware
• Type: Public

E. I. du Pont de Nemours and Company (DuPont) is a diversified chemicals company that operates manufacturing plants, research labs, and corporate offices in over fifty countries worldwide. It is one of the largest chemical companies in the world, and its stock has been a component of the Dow Jones Industrial Average index since 1935. Begun as a gunpowder mill, it was founded by Eleuthère Irénée du Pont in 1802. DuPont is a chemical company in the broadest sense of the term, having engaged both in chemical research and in the oil, automotive, pharmaceuticals, biotech, agricultural, and nuclear industries.

DuPont employs 24,000 people worldwide, and its research led to the development of thousands of products, including nylon, Teflon, Mylar, and Kevlar, as well as pigments, gasoline additives, stain-resistant carpeting, and aerosol agents. In 2017, DuPont merged with Dow Chemical Company to briefly form DowDuPont. The company split again into three companies in 2019, and in 2024, DuPont announced another company split.

History

DuPont was founded in 1802 on the banks of the Brandywine River near Wilmington, Delaware, by French chemist and explosives expert E. I. du Pont. The company, begun as a gunpowder mill, was founded just three years after du Pont arrived in the United States with his family after having fled the French Revolution. Black powder explosive was the only product made by the mill from 1802 until 1880. As early as 1812, DuPont was the largest producer and supplier to the US government of explosive powder and lead gunpowder. By the start of World War I, DuPont had become the world’s largest maker of explosives.

In 1928, DuPont established DuPont’s Central Research Department. By recruiting chemists from top universities, DuPont moved into chemical research and consumer product development. Two early successes changed the course of DuPont’s trajectory. The first was the discovery in 1930 of neoprene, a novel synthetic rubber that proved to be a valuable substitute when the supply chain for natural rubber was disrupted during World War II. This was followed quickly by the 1935 discovery of nylon, the world’s first true synthetic fiber, which proved even more significant. Introduced with much fanfare at the 1939 World’s Fair in New York, nylon could be used in women’s stockings as a substitute for silk as well as in commercial, military, and industrial applications. In its first year of sale, sixty-four million pairs of nylon stockings were sold. Nylon, in various applications, delivered half of DuPont’s profits for decades to come, making it DuPont’s first and greatest success in the commercial mass market.

DuPont continued to expand with forays into the auto, oil, and pharmaceutical industries. During World War II, DuPont was instrumental in the Manhattan Project, designing, building, and operating the Hanford plutonium plant in Washington State. The Hanford plant had the world’s first large-scale plutonium production reactor, and plutonium manufactured there was used in the first atomic bombs. In addition, DuPont’s development of polymer fabrics and materials such as Mylar and Orlon is considered to have been critical to the success of the Apollo space program.

Research at DuPont’s Central Research Department resulted in the invention of Kevlar in 1965. Kevlar is still used in applications such as body armor, musical instruments, sports equipment, and cut- and heat-resistant protective clothing.

By the early 1970s, DuPont had discontinued all manufacturing of trinitrotoluene (TNT) explosives, instead focusing on textiles and industrial chemicals. To ensure a supply of raw materials for its core fiber and plastics businesses, DuPont acquired Conoco Oil in 1981, which it subsequently sold in 1999. In 1991, DuPont formed a joint venture named DuPont Merck Pharmaceutical Co. with Merck Pharmaceutical Company, marking the beginning of its transition away from textiles and toward the life sciences businesses, including biochemical and bioagricultural research and development. DuPont bought out Merck’s share in 1998 for $2.6 billion, and the venture was renamed DuPont Pharmaceutical Co.

In 2004, DuPont divested itself of its textile and interior brands, selling them to Koch Industries for $4.4 billion in cash. The sale of the division, which was renamed Invista, included brands such as Lycra and Stainmaster, and this divestiture marked the end of DuPont’s textile era. In 2015, DuPont spun off its Performance Chemicals segment to its shareholders in the form of a new company named the Chemours Company. The spin off was officially completed in July 2015. This business is a global market leader in titanium technologies, fluoroproducts, and chemical solutions.

By 2015, DuPont was organized into six divisions: agriculture, electronics and communications, industrial biosciences, nutrition and health, performance materials, and safety and protection. According to Ellen Kullman, the first woman to head DuPont (she was named CEO in 2009 and resigned in October 2015), the company had uniquely positioned itself as a global leader in the science of biofuel, high-tech agriculture, and nutrition, in part because of DuPont’s acquisition of Pioneer Hi-Bred, a global producer of genetically modified seed stock. In 2011, DuPont acquired Danisco, a Danish food-ingredient and biofuel enzyme company. DuPont further stepped up its involvement in biofuel research and production, building processing plants in Nevada and Tennessee to churn corn crop waste into cellulosic ethanol. The company also announced the signing of cellulosic ethanol licensing agreements globally, such as the one with the New Tianlong Industry in China in 2015.

In December 2015, DuPont announced it was merging with Dow Chemical Company. The merger was completed in 2017, creating DowDuPont, the world's largest chemical company, with headquarters in Midland, Michigan, and Wilmington, Delaware. DowDuPont combined the related operations of the two company's businesses and then split again within eighteen months in 2019, creating three separate companies: a specialty products unit called DuPont, a material science unit called Dow, and an agriculture business called Corteva Agriscience.

In February 2020, Edward D. Breen returned to the role of CEO. In November 2021, DuPont announced plans to acquire Rogers Corporation in a $5.2 billion deal; however, due to complications with Chinese regulatory agencies, DuPont terminated the deal in November 2022. Also in November 2022, the state of California sued DuPont to recoup losses from money spent on the cleanup of toxic pollutants known as “forever chemicals.” DuPont countered that the lawsuit was without merit as DuPont never manufactured the specific chemicals in question.

DuPont announced its intentions to split into three publically traded companies in May 2024. The new DuPont would focus on transportation, healthcare, and safety; the two newly created companies were set to specialize in electronics semiconductors and interconnections, as well as water filtration and desalination technologies. This split allowed the company to better distribute per- and poly-fluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) liabilities and provide more corporate flexibility. However, in early 2025, DuPont announced the water division would remain within the DuPont name.

Impact

DuPont partnered with the BBC in 2010 to sponsor the Horizons series of twenty-two-minute programs for broadcast TV and social media, highlighting innovation in science and technology. In 2011, DuPont sponsored National Geographic magazine in its yearlong coverage of global population growth. The project, entitled 7 Billion, included articles, videos, and a mobile app addressing issues such as food security, climate change, fertility trends, and biodiversity as they relate to population growth.

Prior to World War I, DuPont was instrumental in the development and manufacturing of ethyl, an additive used for decades to produce leaded gasoline. The banning of leaded gasoline came only in the last half of the twentieth century, although worker deaths at DuPont ethyl-producing plants were recorded as early as 1924.

DuPont developed Freon, a chlorofluorocarbon (CFC), as a coolant and aerosol propellant in the late 1920s. When a 1974 study first revealed that CFCs were a likely cause of ozone depletion in the upper atmosphere, the company modified its CFC production and replaced CFCs with a new generation of environmentally safer coolant chemicals.

The DuPont fungicide Benlate, introduced in 1968, embroiled DuPont in a series of lawsuits when the agricultural chemical was suspected of causing congenital disabilities. The fungicide was taken off the market in 2001.

The rise of the popular environmental movement in the United States and the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts of the 1970s resulted in the Environmental Protection Agency citing DuPont for its involvement in close to two hundred contaminated sites across the United States. These sites included the DuPont munitions plant that was located in Pompton Lakes, New Jersey, where pollution litigation continued well into the twenty-first century. Due to the nature of DuPont’s business, the company and its product’s role in environmental pollution and global climate change faced increasing scrutiny into the twenty-first century.

DuPont’s corporate slogan, "Better Things for Better Living . . . Through Chemistry," was retired in 1999 after decades of use and replaced with "The Miracles of Science."

Bibliography

Bunge, Jacob, David Benoit, and Chelsey Dulaney. "DuPont, Dow Chemical Agree to Merge, Then Break Up into Three Companies." Wall Street Journal, Dow Jones, 11 Dec. 2015, www.wsj.com/articles/dupont-dow-chemical-agree-to-merge-1449834739. Accessed 25 Jan. 2025.

Crooks, Ed. "DuPont Spin Off Starts with Dividend Vow." Financial Times, 1 July 2015, www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/c2067254-1f6a-11e5-ab0f-6bb9974f25d0.html. Accessed 25 Jan. 2025.

"DowDuPont Announces Brand Names for the Three Independent Companies It Intends to Create, Reflecting Ongoing Progress towards Separations." DowDupont, 26 Feb. 2018, www.investors.dupont.com/news-and-media/press-release-details/2018/DowDuPont-Announces-Brand-Names-for-the-Three-Independent-Companies-It-Intends-to-Create-Reflecting-Ongoing-Progress-towards-Separations/default.aspx. Accessed 25 Jan. 2025.

"DuPont Announces Plan to Separate into Three Independent, Publicly Traded Companies." DuPont Investors, 22 May 2024, www.investors.dupont.com/news-and-media/press-release-details/2024/DuPont-Announces-Plan-to-Separate-into-Three-Independent-Publicly-Traded-Companies/default.aspx. Accessed 25 Jan. 2025.

"Global Locations." DuPont, www.dupont.com/locations.html. Accessed 25 Jan. 2025.

Mindock, Clark, et al. “California Sues 3M, DuPont Over Toxic ‘Forever Chemicals.'” Reuters, 10 Nov. 2022, www.reuters.com/business/environment/california-sues-3m-dupont-over-toxic-forever-chemicals-2022-11-10. Accessed 25 Jan. 2025.

Ndiaye, Pap. Nylon and Bombs: DuPont and the March of Modern America. Translated by Elborg Forster. Johns Hopkins UP, 2007.

Walsh, Bryan. "Five Questions with DuPont CEO Ellen Kullman." Time, 13 Feb. 2014, time.com/9072/dupont-ceo-ellen-kullman-q-and-a. Accessed 25 Jan. 2025.