GREAT LAKES

Great Lakes

Great Lakes

Introduction

Great Lakes Chemical Corporation is a leading global manufacturer of bromine and bromine chemicals. Bromine, a pungent liquid that irritates the skin red, mixes easily with hundreds of organic compounds, making thousands of toxic chemicals and non toxic. Although bromine compounds are not only its products, Great Lakes Chemical relies heavily on bromine for much of its revenue.

Great Lakes Chemical was founded as an oil and gas company called McClanahan Oil Company. Its founder, WL McClanahan, created the company to develop an oil industry increasingly centered near Mount Pleasant in central Michigan. The company has remained low for many years, limited both by competition from large companies and limited reserves of oil in Michigan.

In 1946, Charles Hale, a geologist and Wall Street financier, became the major shareholder of the McClanahan Oil Company then assumed the presidency. As part of its goal of creating a sphere of natural resources, engineering Hale acquisition of Great Lakes Chemical Corporation in March 1948. Great Lakes Chemical is the title to the reserves of oil and gas wells and bromine acting nearby City, Michigan. In May 1950, the two companies merged to form the Great Lakes Oil & Chemical Company.

During the 1950 Great Lakes increased its oil interests in buying the old Oil Corporation in December 1951 and the Cleveland Oil Company in October 1952. The company was subsequently merged with Great Lakes oil and chemicals as part of a program to streamline production. The Company's ability to compete with its traditional oil market began to erode during the late 1950s. Faced with imminent bankruptcy, the Great Lakes have been forced to significantly change its business strategies.

Earl T. McBee, a professor of industrial chemistry at Purdue University and a consultant for the Great Lakes since 1953, called for the phasing out oil industrial company, in favor of expanding its operations, bromine. Charles Hale Agreement with McBee and 1957, authorized the sale of oil properties from the company in California. Through additional sales of real estate in California in 1960, Great Lakes has raised enough capital to buy a 50 per cent of chemical Arkansas Inc., owner of some bromine-rich brine wells in Arkansas. So, Great Lakes has become a leading product of bromine in a bet on the best of the deposit before the industry leader Dow Chemical could.

The company changed its name to Great Lakes Chemical Corporation on May 9, 1960, and continued its rehabilitation through the process of trying to diversify into financial services. The company failed, however, and was abandoned in 1963.

At that time, the largest applications for bromine are ethylene dibromide, an additive in leaded gasoline. ethylene dibromide, however, is a mere commodity chemical with a low profit margin. In an effort to create a line of more profitable specialty chemicals, Great Lakes Chemical spent 5 percent of revenues to develop new compounds with bromine in a joint venture with PPG Industries. The applications were found for bromine in a wide variety of products, including biodegradable soil fumigants and ...