Dupont At Kathwaite
E.I du Pont de Nemours & Co.: Titanium Dioxide Group#: 7
Lu Yu
Yang Hu
You Wang
1
1.
There are basically three technologies to produce TiO2: sulfate process, rutile chloride process and ilmenite chloride process. Most of Du Pont’s competitors, such as NL Industry, mainly used sulfate process, which require lowgrade feedstock and produce a large amount of waste. This process will cost the company more money to deal with the wastes while cost much less in purchasing feedstocks than other processes. However, between 1969 and 1972, an new environmental protection legislation was enacted and require the company …show more content…
Meanwhile, rutile ore, the feedstocks of chloride process, also in shortage, which cause the increase of the price of rutile ore. The increasing cost on both processes will cause the price of TiO2 to increase. Meanwhile, the devaluation of
US dollars will also affect the import. Under this market change, all companies that produce
TiO2 would focus more on developing the ilmenite process or improving other two processes to be more environmentally friendly and profitable.
The main weakness of Du Pont’s competitors, also the main strength of Du Pont, is that Du
Pont is the only company that has the operational knowledge to make production economically viable. Moreover, the main competitor of Du Pont, NL industry, was less profitable than Du Pont and rely more on debt to finance its growth. Therefore, NL industry is more financially sensitive to market change than Du Pont is. Also, because TiO2 is the second smallest division of Du Pont’s total sales, the market change of TiO2 market will not affect too much on its earnings while NL rely on TiO2 for almost one quarter of its total sales.
Lu Yu
Yang Hu
You Wang
1
1.
There are basically three technologies to produce TiO2: sulfate process, rutile chloride process and ilmenite chloride process. Most of Du Pont’s competitors, such as NL Industry, mainly used sulfate process, which require lowgrade feedstock and produce a large amount of waste. This process will cost the company more money to deal with the wastes while cost much less in purchasing feedstocks than other processes. However, between 1969 and 1972, an new environmental protection legislation was enacted and require the company …show more content…
Meanwhile, rutile ore, the feedstocks of chloride process, also in shortage, which cause the increase of the price of rutile ore. The increasing cost on both processes will cause the price of TiO2 to increase. Meanwhile, the devaluation of
US dollars will also affect the import. Under this market change, all companies that produce
TiO2 would focus more on developing the ilmenite process or improving other two processes to be more environmentally friendly and profitable.
The main weakness of Du Pont’s competitors, also the main strength of Du Pont, is that Du
Pont is the only company that has the operational knowledge to make production economically viable. Moreover, the main competitor of Du Pont, NL industry, was less profitable than Du Pont and rely more on debt to finance its growth. Therefore, NL industry is more financially sensitive to market change than Du Pont is. Also, because TiO2 is the second smallest division of Du Pont’s total sales, the market change of TiO2 market will not affect too much on its earnings while NL rely on TiO2 for almost one quarter of its total sales.