Over 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 the company's plants in Starke, Florida; EdgeMoor, Delaware; New Johnsonville, Tennessee; DeLisle, Mississippi; Kuan Yin, Taiwan and Altamira, Mexico produce about a quarter of the world's TiO
2 pigments.
TiO
2 exists naturally in titanium ores like ilmenite and rutile. Its molecular structure makes for high brightness and opacity, but first it must be chemically extracted and purified. For many years high costs discouraged widespread TiO
2 use, but in 1931 the "sulfate process" was invented, lowering production costs and allowing TiO
2 pigments to displace cheaper lithopone (barium sulfate/zinc sulfide).
DuPont entered the TiO
2 business in 1931 when it purchased a TiO
2 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 EdgeMoor plant in 1951, it gradually replaced the sulfate process in all DuPont TiO
2 plants as they expanded to meet ever-increasing demand through the 1990s. Reflecting its global scope, DuPont opened a TiO
2 plant in Taiwan in 1994 and a technical service center in Mechelen, Belgium, in 1995 to serve the European, Middle Eastern and Asian markets.
TiO
2 is the most important white pigment used in the coatings, plastics and paper industries today.
As the world's largest producer of TiO2, we are proud of our contributions to these industries.
![Global [change]](/globalassets/v3/images/en_US/topNav_Mn_count.gif)
