Engelhard - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Engelhard Corporation is a former American Fortune 500

Fortune 500

The Fortune 500 is an annual list compiled and published by Fortune magazine that ranks the top 500 U.S. closely held and public corporations as ranked by their gross revenue after adjustments made by Fortune to exclude the impact of excise taxes companies collect. The list includes publicly and...

company headquartered in Iselin

Iselin, New Jersey

Iselin is a census-designated place and unincorporated area within Woodbridge Township, in Middlesex County, New Jersey, United States. As of the United States 2000 Census, the CDP population was 16,698.-Geography:...

, New Jersey

New Jersey

New Jersey is a state in the Northeastern and Middle Atlantic regions of the United States. , its population was 8,791,894. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York, on the southeast and south by the Atlantic Ocean, on the west by Pennsylvania and on the southwest by Delaware...

, USA

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

. It is credited with developing the first production catalytic converter

Catalytic converter

A catalytic converter is a device used to convert toxic exhaust emissions from an internal combustion engine into non-toxic substances. Inside a catalytic converter, a catalyst stimulates a chemical reaction in which noxious byproducts of combustion are converted to less toxic substances by dint...

. In 2006, the German chemical manufacturer BASF

BASF

BASF SE is the largest chemical company in the world and is headquartered in Germany. BASF originally stood for Badische Anilin- und Soda-Fabrik . Today, the four letters are a registered trademark and the company is listed on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange, London Stock Exchange, and Zurich Stock...

bought Engelhard for $US5 billion.

Early history

The company was started by Charles W. Engelhard, Sr. in 1902 when he purchased the Charles F. Croselmire Company in Newark, New Jersey

Newark, New Jersey

Newark is the largest city in the American state of New Jersey, and the seat of Essex County. As of the 2010 United States Census, Newark had a population of 277,140, maintaining its status as the largest municipality in New Jersey. It is the 68th largest city in the U.S...

. He subsequently founded the American Platinum Works in 1903 and acquired several other companies. In 1904, he purchased Baker & Co., a platinum

Platinum

Platinum is a chemical element with the chemical symbol Pt and an atomic number of 78. Its name is derived from the Spanish term platina del Pinto, which is literally translated into "little silver of the Pinto River." It is a dense, malleable, ductile, precious, gray-white transition metal...

smelting

Smelting

Smelting is a form of extractive metallurgy; its main use is to produce a metal from its ore. This includes iron extraction from iron ore, and copper extraction and other base metals from their ores...

and refining

Refining

Refining is the process of purification of a substance or a form. The term is usually used of a natural resource that is almost in a usable form, but which is more useful in its pure form. For instance, most types of natural petroleum will burn straight from the ground, but it will burn poorly...

business located in Newark and in 1905, he established Hanovia Chemical and Manufacturing Company also in Newark. Engelhard
became the world's largest refiner and fabricator of platinum metals, gold and silver, a producer of silver and silver alloys in mill forms, operator of the world's largest precious metals smelter. They also developed liquid gold for decorative applications.

Merger and spinoff of Phibro

In 1958, Engelhard's son Charles Jr.

Charles W. Engelhard, Jr.

Charles W. Engelhard, Jr. was an American businessman who controlled an international mining and metals conglomerate, as well as a major owner in Thoroughbred horse racing, and a candidate in the 1955 New Jersey State Senate Elections.Engelhard made his fortune in the precious metals industry,...

consolidated the family’s holdings to form Engelhard Industries, Inc. as a publicly held company listed on the New York Stock Exchange

New York Stock Exchange

The New York Stock Exchange is a stock exchange located at 11 Wall Street in Lower Manhattan, New York City, USA. It is by far the world's largest stock exchange by market capitalization of its listed companies at 13.39 trillion as of Dec 2010...

. In 1963, Engelhard, under the advisement of Lazard Frères

Lazard

Lazard Ltd is the parent company of Lazard Group LLC, a global, independent investment bank with approximately 2,300 employees in 42 cities across 27 countries throughout Europe, North America, Asia, Australia, Central and South America...

, took a 20 percent interest in Minerals & Chemicals Philipp (MCP), a recently formed partnership between a small producer of nonmetallic minerals such as kaolin and fuller's earth, and Philipp Brothers

Philipp Brothers

Phibro LLC is an international commodities trading firm and a subsidiary of Occidental Petroleum Corporation . Phibro trades in crude oil, oil products, natural gas, precious and base metals, agricultural products, commodity-related equities and other products...

, a trading firm specializing in the buying and selling of ores on the international market. Engelhard executed the transaction through a stock swap, giving up 8 percent of Engelhard as partial payment for the 20 percent interest in MCP.

Sales in MCP took off soon afterwards, mostly from Philipp Brothers's fast-growing ore trading. In 1964 it had sales of $US447 million, and by 1966 sales reached $US709 million. Even though Engelhard Industries did only about 40 percent of that figure, it was able, in September 1967, to work out a merger of the two companies that left the Engelhard family controlling about 40 percent of the new company. The new entity, which was called Engelhard Minerals & Chemicals Corporation (EMCC), was structured into three divisions: Minerals & Chemicals, which processed non-metallic minerals; Engelhard Industries, which refined and fabricated precious metals; and Philipp Brothers. Nearly one-half of the company's 1967 net income of $28 million was generated by the Philipp trading division, with the Engelhard metal processing contributing 34 percent and minerals and chemicals about 19 percent.

Philipp's trading continued to enjoy phenomenal growth as the world turned to spot traders to move scarce natural resources around the globe. By 1972, EMCC's sales hit $US2 billion, about 80 percent of it supplied by Philipp, and in 1974 revenue reached $5 billion. By 1981, Philipp Brothers earned 89 percent of the total corporation's $US26.6 billion in revenues and 88 percent of its $US532.7 million in profits. Management in the slow growing minerals-and-chemicals division, along with those in precious metals, felt overshadowed by their trading counterparts. This led to the spinoff of Philipp Brothers (later called Phibro), and renaming what was left the Engelhard Corporation.

Later history

Engelhard operated a Minerals & Chemicals Division and an Engelhard Industries Division
with corporate headquarters in Menlo Park, New Jesey. In 1984, the company was realigned to consist of a Specialty Chemicals Division and a Specialty Metals Division.
Engelhard expanded significantly through growth, acquisitions and joint
ventures. Acquisitions included the Freeport Kaolin Company in 1985; most of the business of the Harshaw/Filtrol Partnership in 1988; the auto catalysts and petroleum catalysts businesses of Solvay Catalysts GmbH, in 1992 and 1994, respectively; the Mearl Corporation in 1996; the catalyst business of Mallinckrodt

Mallinckrodt

Mallinckrodt is a set of pharmaceutical, chemical, imaging, and respiratory equipment suppliers based in the St. Louis, Missouri, area. Founded in 1867 when the Mallinckrodt brothers formed G. Mallinckrodt & Company to manufacture pharmaceutical chemicals, Mallinckrodt was purchased by Tyco...

Inc. in 1998; Süd Chemie’s fats and oils catalyst business in 2001; and the Collaborative Group, a personal care company, in 2004.

BASF

BASF

recently initiated a hostile takeover for Engelhard.

On May 30, 2006, Engelhard was taken over by BASF

BASF

after the board agreed for the takeover of BASF. BASF paid $US39 per share. The transaction totalled $5 billion.

On August 2, 2006, BASF began to rename Engelhard worldwide. This started in the USA with BASF Catalysts LLC.

On April 1, 2010, BASF Catalysts LLC became part of BASF Corporation.

Environmental record

Catalytic-converter-equipped vehicles have helped cut other air pollutants by more than 3 billion tons worldwide between 1975 and 2000, of this 1.5 billion short tons was in the United States. Automobiles meet emission standards that required reductions of up to 98+ percent for HC, 96 percent for CO, and 95 percent for NOx compared to the uncontrolled levels of automobiles sold in the 1960s. Despite the fact that fuel use increased approximately 50 percent and vehicle miles traveled nationwide increased by 150 percent between 1970 and 1998, CO, VOC, and NOx emissions from motor vehicles in 1998 decreased by over 44 million short tons
compared to 1970 levels.

Engelhard received a 2004 Presidential Green Chemistry Challenge Award from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for "the design of safer chemicals," specifically the company's Rightfit organic pigments

Researchers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst

University of Massachusetts Amherst

The University of Massachusetts Amherst is a public research and land-grant university in Amherst, Massachusetts, United States and the flagship of the University of Massachusetts system...

ranked Engelhard as the 32nd-largest corporate producer of air pollution

Air pollution

Air pollution is the introduction of chemicals, particulate matter, or biological materials that cause harm or discomfort to humans or other living organisms, or cause damage to the natural environment or built environment, into the atmosphere....

in the United States, just behind Danaher

Danaher

Danaher may refer to:* Declan Danaher, English Rugby union player* Kevin Danaher , , author and prominent Irish folklorist* Kevin Danaher, Ph.D. in sociology, author of several books on Green Economy...

(a professional instrumentation, industrial technologies and tools & components company). The study found Engelhard's most toxic pollution comprised cobalt

Cobalt

Cobalt is a chemical element with symbol Co and atomic number 27. It is found naturally only in chemically combined form. The free element, produced by reductive smelting, is a hard, lustrous, silver-gray metal....

(500 lb/year), nickel

Nickel

Nickel is a chemical element with the chemical symbol Ni and atomic number 28. It is a silvery-white lustrous metal with a slight golden tinge. Nickel belongs to the transition metals and is hard and ductile...

(2069 lb/year), chromium

Chromium

Chromium is a chemical element which has the symbol Cr and atomic number 24. It is the first element in Group 6. It is a steely-gray, lustrous, hard metal that takes a high polish and has a high melting point. It is also odorless, tasteless, and malleable...

(1000 lb/year), and manganese

Manganese

Manganese is a chemical element, designated by the symbol Mn. It has the atomic number 25. It is found as a free element in nature , and in many minerals...

(500 lb/year) compounds, based on Toxics Release Inventory

Toxics Release Inventory

The Toxics Release Inventory is a publicly available database containing information on toxic chemical releases and other waste management activities in the United States.-Summary of requirements:...

data.

External links

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