Chemours

The Chemours Company (NYSE: CC; pronounced kem-ORZ) is an American chemical corporation headquartered in Wilmington, Delaware, that was formed in 2015 as a spin-off from DuPont. Founded in July 2015, the company has its corporate headquarters in Wilmington, Delaware. Drawing on more than two centuries of chemical industry history inherited from its parent company, Chemours describes itself as "a new company with over 200 years of history, created from the DuPont performance chemicals businesses." The company is one of Delaware's largest corporate employers and anchor tenants in downtown Wilmington, occupying the storied DuPont Building on Rodney Square. As both a major economic presence and a source of significant environmental litigation, Chemours occupies a prominent and sometimes contested place in the state's corporate landscape.

Origins and Founding

In October 2013, DuPont announced that it was planning to spin off its "performance chemicals" business into a new publicly traded company in mid-2015. DuPont filed its initial Form 10 with the SEC in December 2014 and announced that the new company would be called "The Chemours Company." The name is a portmanteau of the words chemical and Nemours, a nod to DuPont's full name, E. I. du Pont de Nemours & Co. The Chemours Company officially began its journey on July 1, 2015, emerging as an independent entity following its spin-off from DuPont. This strategic separation was initiated by DuPont in October 2013 to streamline its operations and concentrate on more dynamic growth sectors.

DuPont, which had been founded in 1802, established Chemours as a $6 billion global firm focused on the performance chemicals business, in anticipation of DuPont's merger with Dow. This transition, however, was not without its complexities; Chemours commenced operations burdened by approximately $4 billion in inherited debt and assumed responsibility for various legal liabilities, particularly those stemming from environmental contamination lawsuits linked to chemicals such as C8 and GenX.

Most of Chemours' initial leadership and more than 8,000 of its employees were once part of DuPont. The company's CC ticker symbol on the New York Stock Exchange is also a play on DuPont's DD symbol; it was also formerly used by the electronics retailer, Circuit City, prior to its bankruptcy in 2009. In less than two years, Chemours made the 2017 Fortune 500 list.

Delaware Headquarters and Local Presence

Significantly, Chemours decided to stay headquartered in Delaware when it was spun off, although other states made bids to lure it away. Chemours announced that it would locate its global headquarters in Wilmington, Delaware. After considering other potential locations in the United States, Chemours chose Delaware because of the area's highly educated workforce, close proximity to customers, and favorable changes to the state's corporate tax structure.

The company's selection of the historic DuPont Building as its permanent base was a defining moment for downtown Wilmington. On January 15, 2019, Chemours reopened its newly renovated corporate headquarters in the DuPont Building, a registered historic landmark in downtown Wilmington, Delaware. The return to the 106-year-old building, now owned and operated by The Buccini/Pollin Group, came after a 20-month renovation that transformed its interior into a light-filled, modern, and elegant open workspace environment. The new headquarters occupies 280,000 square feet in an 11-story segment of the building, and Chemours' share of construction costs was $30 million.

Chemours made a conscious decision not to change the building's name to the Chemours Building, out of respect for the company's heritage, which dates back to the founding of DuPont on Brandywine Creek in 1802. Approximately 850 employees, contractors, and consultants work in the company's headquarters, which occupies 280,000 square feet across 11 stories of the building.

Chemours employs about 1,000 people in Delaware at its headquarters and labs. The company also maintains research and development facilities within the state, including the University of Delaware partnership described below.

Products and Business Operations

Chemours manufactures and sells performance chemicals falling within three segments: Titanium Technologies (titanium dioxide); Fluoroproducts (refrigerants and industrial fluoropolymer resins and derivatives including Freon, Teflon, Viton, Nafion, ECCtreme ECA and Krytox); and Chemical Solutions (cyanide, sulfuric acid, aniline, methylamines, and reactive metals).

Chemours is the manufacturer of Teflon, the brand name of polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE), known for its anti-stick properties. It also produces titanium dioxide and refrigerant gases. Titanium dioxide, sold under the Ti-Pure brand, is used as a white pigment in paints, plastics, and coatings. Chemours' first dedicated Ti-Pure™ plant opened in Edgemoor, Delaware, at a site that previously housed an iron mill which produced girders for the Brooklyn Bridge.

Chemours serves customers in over 130 countries with a deep, collaborative knowledge in key industries including semiconductors, fine chemical manufacturing, and photovoltaics. The company reported net sales of $5.8 billion for the full year 2024, underscoring its significant market presence and the critical role its products play in everyday applications, from automotive to paints and plastics.

Chemours serves plastics and coatings, mining, oil refining, refrigeration and air conditioning, automotive, energy, and telecommunications, electronics and general industries. Its Opteon line of low-global-warming-potential refrigerants has been a significant area of growth, as regulatory changes around the world push industries toward more sustainable cooling alternatives.

Research, Innovation, and University Partnerships

A central component of Chemours' Delaware identity is its research partnership with the University of Delaware. Chemours built its new innovation center, The Chemours Discovery Hub, and partnered with the University of Delaware on the university's STAR campus. In 2020, Chemours opened its Discovery Hub, a $150 million investment with 130 custom labs and 300+ employees. Located on the University of Delaware STAR Campus, the state-of-the-art, global facility is one of the largest research and development centers in the state of Delaware and within the chemical industry.

The facility was designed to keep 330 research jobs in the Wilmington area and help prepare Delaware students for success in science and technology research jobs. Chemours scientists are working on advancing and developing new technologies that are critical to improving the nation's national security, technology leadership, and energy transition — including more efficient and sustainable lithium-ion batteries, immersion cooling technologies for data centers, semiconductor manufacturing, and low-global-warming-potential refrigerants.

Through partnerships with the University of Delaware and Delaware State University, Chemours was selected to receive over $40 million in federal funding to advance research in the Hydrogen Economy in the state of Delaware. In addition, Chemours has invested almost an additional $2 million in STEM and sustainability education programs and scholarships since 2020.

Environmental Controversies and Legal Proceedings

Chemours has been the subject of major environmental litigation since its founding, in large part because it assumed legal liability for environmental claims against DuPont as a condition of the spin-off. Chemours has assumed various liabilities arising from lawsuits against DuPont.

The most prominent ongoing controversy involves per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), a class of synthetic chemicals sometimes called "forever chemicals" because they do not readily break down in the environment. Chemours' plant in Bladen County, North Carolina, was found to be dumping vast quantities of a chemical dubbed "GenX," a precursor of Teflon, into the Cape Fear River. In North Carolina, the Chemours Fayetteville plant released GenX compounds into the Cape Fear River, which is a drinking water source for the Wilmington area.

In June 2023, Chemours, together with DuPont and Corteva, settled claims that they contaminated U.S. public water systems with toxic "forever chemicals" (PFAS) for $1.19 billion, with Chemours paying $592 million and DuPont and Corteva paying the rest. In September 2023, a court in The Netherlands declared Chemours liable for pollution caused by the Teflon-producing plant in the city of Dordrecht, South Holland. The court stated that Chemours' predecessor DuPont had willingly withheld crucial information between 1984 and 1998 about the harmful effects of the substances it used and emitted, which made the pollution unlawful.

In August 2025, Chemours, DuPont, and Corteva announced a settlement to comprehensively resolve all pending environmental and other claims by the State of New Jersey against the companies in various litigation matters and other state directives. The settlement involves payments over 25 years, with a pre-tax net present value of approximately $500 million to be shared by the parties.

In February 2024, CEO Mark Newman, CFO Jonathan Lock, and Financial Controller Camela Wisel were placed on administrative leave by the company's board due to members of senior management delaying payments to some vendors to aid incentive compensation and obtain a bigger bonus. The officers' actions violated the company's standards for ethics.