Chemours

The Chemours Company (NYSE: CC; pronounced kem-ORZ) is an American chemical corporation headquartered in Wilmington, Delaware, formed on July 1, 2015, as a spin-off from DuPont. 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 a major anchor tenant in downtown Wilmington, occupying the historic DuPont Building on Rodney Square. As both a significant economic presence and a source of consequential environmental litigation — particularly around per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) — Chemours holds a prominent and sometimes contested place in Delaware's corporate story.

Origins and Founding

In October 2013, DuPont announced plans to spin off its "performance chemicals" business into a new publicly traded company, targeting a mid-2015 separation. The move was intended to let DuPont concentrate on higher-growth segments such as agriculture and specialty materials, and it came as DuPont was also pursuing what would eventually become its 2017 merger with Dow Chemical. DuPont filed an initial Form 10 with the Securities and Exchange Commission in December 2014 and announced the new entity would be called "The Chemours Company." The name is a portmanteau of chemical and Nemours, a nod to DuPont's formal name, E. I. du Pont de Nemours & Co.

The Chemours Company began independent operations on July 1, 2015. DuPont established Chemours as a roughly $6 billion global firm focused on performance chemicals, but the transition was not clean: Chemours started life burdened by approximately $4 billion in inherited debt and assumed legal responsibility for a wide range of environmental claims previously held by DuPont, particularly those tied to fluorochemical contamination involving compounds known as C8 and GenX. Most of Chemours' initial leadership and more than 8,000 employees had previously worked within DuPont's performance chemicals division.

The company's CC ticker symbol on the New York Stock Exchange was a deliberate echo of DuPont's long-standing DD symbol. It had previously been used by the electronics retailer Circuit City before that company's bankruptcy in 2009. Within two years of its founding, Chemours appeared on the 2017 Fortune 500 list, reflecting the substantial scale of the businesses it had absorbed from DuPont.

Delaware Headquarters and Local Presence

When Chemours was spun off, other states actively bid to attract the new company's headquarters. Delaware won out. Chemours cited the region's educated workforce, proximity to customers along the Northeast Corridor, and changes to the state's corporate tax structure as decisive factors in its choice to remain in Wilmington.

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 there, following a 20-month renovation of the 106-year-old building — now owned and operated by The Buccini/Pollin Group — that transformed its interior into a modern open workspace environment. The headquarters occupies 280,000 square feet across 11 stories of the building, and Chemours' share of construction costs was $30 million. Approximately 850 employees, contractors, and consultants work at the headquarters. Chemours employs roughly 1,000 people in Delaware in total, between its headquarters and its research and development facilities.

Chemours made a deliberate decision not to rename the building after itself, out of respect for the heritage connecting the structure to the founding of DuPont on Brandywine Creek in 1802. The DuPont Building name stands.

Products and Business Operations

Chemours organizes its operations into three principal segments. Titanium Technologies produces titanium dioxide sold under the Ti-Pure brand, used widely 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 whose girders helped build the Brooklyn Bridge. The Fluoroproducts segment manufactures refrigerants and industrial fluoropolymer resins and derivatives, including the well-known brands Freon, Teflon, Viton, Nafion, ECCtreme ECA, and Krytox. The Chemical Solutions segment covers cyanide, sulfuric acid, aniline, methylamines, and reactive metals.

Chemours is the manufacturer of Teflon, the brand name of polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE), a polymer widely recognized for its non-stick and heat-resistant properties. Its Opteon line of low-global-warming-potential refrigerants has been a growing area of commercial focus, driven by regulatory changes in North America and Europe that push industrial and commercial cooling toward more climate-friendly alternatives. In early 2026, Chemours and French server manufacturer 2CRSi announced that an Opteon-based fluid had successfully qualified for use in 2CRSi's immersion-cooled server platforms, an application the company is targeting as data center energy demands rise.

Chemours serves customers in over 130 countries across industries including semiconductors, fine chemical manufacturing, photovoltaics, automotive, oil refining, refrigeration and air conditioning, energy, and telecommunications. The company reported net sales of $5.8 billion for the full year 2024.

Research, Innovation, and University Partnerships

A central part of Chemours' Delaware identity is its research partnership with the University of Delaware. In 2020, Chemours opened the Chemours Discovery Hub on the University of Delaware's STAR Campus — a $150 million investment housing 130 custom laboratories and more than 300 employees. It is one of the largest private research and development centers in the state and among the larger ones in the U.S. chemical industry.

The facility was designed to keep 330 research jobs in the Wilmington area and help prepare Delaware students for careers in science and technology. Chemours scientists at the hub are working on advancing lithium-ion battery efficiency, immersion cooling technologies for data centers, semiconductor manufacturing processes, and next-generation refrigerants.

Through partnerships with the University of Delaware and Delaware State University, Chemours was selected to receive more than $40 million in federal funding to advance hydrogen economy research in Delaware. The company has also invested nearly $2 million in STEM and sustainability education programs and scholarships in the state since 2020.

Environmental Controversies and Legal Proceedings

Chemours has faced major environmental litigation since its founding, largely because it assumed legal liability for environmental claims against DuPont as a condition of the spin-off agreement. That liability has proven substantial.

The most prominent controversy involves PFAS — per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, a broad class of synthetic compounds sometimes called "forever chemicals" because they don't break down readily in the environment or in the human body. Chemours' Fayetteville Works plant in Bladen County, North Carolina, was found to have discharged a chemical compound known as GenX — a processing aid used in Teflon production — into the Cape Fear River, which serves as a drinking water source for the Wilmington, North Carolina, metropolitan area. The discharges prompted investigations by state and federal regulators and drew national attention to PFAS contamination as a public health issue.

In June 2023, Chemours, together with DuPont and Corteva, settled claims that the three companies had contaminated U.S. public water systems with PFAS compounds for a combined $1.19 billion. Chemours' share of the settlement was $592 million, with DuPont and Corteva covering the remainder.

In September 2023, a Dutch court declared Chemours liable for pollution caused by its Teflon-producing plant in Dordrecht, South Holland. The court found that Chemours' predecessor DuPont had knowingly withheld information between 1984 and 1998 about the harmful effects of the substances it used and emitted, rendering the pollution unlawful under Dutch law.

In August 2025, Chemours, DuPont, and Corteva announced a settlement to resolve all pending environmental and other claims brought by the State of New Jersey, covering various litigation matters and state directives related to PFAS contamination. The settlement involves payments structured over 25 years, with a pre-tax net present value of approximately $500 million shared among the three companies.

Corporate Governance

In February 2024, the company's board placed CEO Mark Newman, CFO Jonathan Lock, and Financial Controller Camela Wisel on administrative leave after an internal review found that members of senior management had delayed payments to certain vendors in order to influence incentive compensation calculations and secure larger bonuses. The board determined the conduct violated the company's ethics standards, and all three officers were subsequently separated from the company.

In December 2025, Chemours announced the appointment of Michael Foley as President of Titanium Technologies, alongside the departure of Damián Gumpel from the company's leadership team.

Financial Profile

Chemours began its independent existence carrying roughly $4 billion in debt inherited from DuPont. That debt load has been actively managed over the decade since the spin-off. In 2025, the company completed a private offering of $700 million in 7.875% Senior Unsecured Notes due 2034, upsized from an initial offering target, as part of its ongoing capital structure management. Net sales for the full year 2024 were $5.8 billion. The company trades on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol CC.