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Overview

DuPont's manufacturing plant on the Ohio River just outside Louisville, Kentucky, has been producing neoprene, or "synthetic rubber," since September 1942. When the United States entered World War II in December the federal government purchased the plant, which DuPont continued to manage. Neoprene was a vital war material, especially when the war with Japan cut off supplies of natural rubber. At the end of 1948 DuPont bought the plant back from the government and on January 1, 1949, the Louisville facility began operations under the company's sole ownership. The area also proved attractive to other chemical companies and soon became known as "Rubbertown." Through the 1960s and 1970s DuPont modernized and expanded the Louisville works. After a series of explosions and fires in August 1965 killed 11 workers there, DuPont developed new technologies for neoprene production that greatly reduced the possibility of explosions.

In 1955 the Louisville plant started manufacturing Freon-22® refrigerant and aerosol propellant. Thirty-three years later, however, plant managers began planning for a phase-out of this product when DuPont decided to curtail all production of ozone-depleting chlorofluorocarbon (CFC) products for U.S. markets. By 1992 Louisville was producing ozone-safe, non-CFC substitutes like Suva® refrigerants and Dymel® propellants. In 1998, just after DuPont acquired Protein Technologies International, Louisville started producing protein isolates, or concentrated soy protein, for industrial applications like paper and paperboard coatings. Through nearly 60 years of change, however, the plant continued to make its original and versatile product — neoprene.

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