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Overview

DuPont entered the dyes and dyestuffs business because, as luck or nature would have it, both explosives and synthetic dyes posed similar organic chemistry challenges. When World War I cut off access to diphenylamine, a chemical component of smokeless powder, DuPont was forced to build its own plant. Diphenylamine also was used in the production of dyes, which had been manufactured mainly in Germany. DuPont took the opportunity and stepped into the breach, building on British expertise and, after the war, the help of German scientists. Ten years of endeavor, however, demonstrated that entering a new market wholesale was far too complicated ­ a more promising solution was to acquire existing firms and improve their products and processes. The first such acquisition came in 1930 with the purchase of the Newport Chemical Company, which provided talented researchers and the formula for Jade Green dye.

DuPont’s hard work on the organic chemistry of dyes paid multiple dividends. In 1931, after ten years in operation, the Dyestuffs Department at Deepwater, New Jersey, became the Organic Chemistry Department. By the mid-1940s two-thirds of Orchem’s products were directly traceable to prior dye-related research. The dye business itself was less successful. DuPont’s dye-related profits peaked in the 1950s and then slumped in the mid-1960s, due in part to competitors utilizing newer technology. DuPont responded by building an automated plant in Puerto Rico during the 1970s, but raw materials shortages and increasing energy and regulatory costs proved too costly. DuPont closed the Puerto Rico plant in 1980 and abandoned the dye business.

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