Located on the westernmost side of Harrison County on the Mississippi Gulf Coast, the DeLisle site celebrates its 29th anniversary in 2008, with production Line 1 of the facility having come online in 1979. Through the years, the site has added a second production line and grown to staff more than 500 DuPont employees and more than 500 contract employees.
The DeLisle facility produces ten percent of the world's supply of Titanium Dioxide (TiO2) for the coatings and plastics markets making our facilty the second largest TiO2 producer in the world.
TiO2 - More Than 70 Years of History
DuPont has been making titanium-based white pigments for paper, coatings, plastics and specialty applications since 1931 and is currently the world's leading producer. Today, in addition to our DeLisle facility, the company operates a mining facility in Starke, Florida and TiO2 plants in Edge Moor, Delaware; New Johnsonville, Tennessee; Kuan Yin, Taiwan and Altamira, Mexico producing about a quarter of the world's TiO2 pigments.
DuPont entered the TiO2 business in 1931 when it purchased a TiO2 patent-holding company, the Commercial Pigments Corporation, and offered a line of Ti-Pure® products. When demand surged after World War II, DuPont engineers invented an alternate, more economical "chloride process." Introduced at the Edge Moor plant in 1951, it gradually replaced the sulfate process in all DuPont TiO2 plants as they expanded to meet ever-increasing demand through the 1990s. Reflecting its global scope, DuPont opened a TiO2 plant in Taiwan in 1994 and a technical service center in Mechelen, Belgium, in 1995 to serve the European, Middle Eastern and Asian markets.
TiO2 is the most important white pigment used in the coatings, plastics and paper industries today. As one of the world's largest producers of TiO2, we are proud of our contributions to these industries.
