Koppers

Company History: Koppers is a global chemical and materials company based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States in an art-deco 1920s skyscraper, the Koppers Tower.

In 1943, Koppers, at the US Government's behest, built a factory in Kobuta, Pennsylvania on the left bank of the Ohio River just downriver from Beaver, to manufacture styrene-butadiene monomer, a building block used to make a form of synthetic rubber for the World War II defense effort.

In 1951, at Port Arthur, Texas, the company built a plant to manufacture the chemical monomer ethylbenzene, using as raw materials ethylene from the nearby Gulf Oil refinery, and benzene, which was a byproduct of the company's coke ovens in Pennsylvania and which was shipped down to Texas by barge. The ethylbenzene produced there was then shipped by barge back up to the Kobuta plant where it was converted to styrene monomer, and then polymerized to make expandable polystyrene. In the early 1950s, the company purchased a license to manufacture polyethylene at its Port Arthur plant. These chemical operations later were the basis for forming a new corporate entity with Sinclair Oil Corporation to form the Sinclair-Koppers Company in 1965.

In early 1988 Beazer, a British conglomerate run by one of the foremost corporate raiders of the 1980s, successfully launched a hostile takeover of Koppers for $1.81 billion ($3.8 billion today). The sale was completed on June 17, 1988. A smaller, more streamlined domestic business unit of Koppers was bought back by local management in the early 2000s, and although much simpler than the once sprawling chemical and aggregate conglomerate of the early-to-mid 20th century, Koppers has once again become successful at its core businesses. In 2006 the new Beazer-free independent Koppers again went public.

Brief History: The U.S. is a country of 50 states covering a vast swath of North America, with Alaska in the northwest and Hawaii extending the nation’s presence into the Pacific Ocean. Major Atlantic Coast cities are New York, a global finance and culture center, and capital Washington, DC. Midwestern metropolis Chicago is known for influential architecture and on the west coast, Los Angeles' Hollywood is famed for filmmaking.