CORPORATIONS: From Corn to Gas

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"If You Had Money." National's first big move into chemicals was to build an $11.5 million plant for producing metallic sodium and chlorine at Ashtabula, Ohio; with sales of $8,500,000 a year, it now has the highest profit margin of any National division. Next, Bierwirth paid $6,700,000 for a 25% interest in U.S. Industrial Chemicals, Inc. (industrial alcohol, antifreeze, resins, etc.), has since merged the company with National. He then bought a 20% interest in Intermountain Chemical Corp. (soda ash), and for $4,500.000 bought Algonquin Chemical Co., Inc. (caustic soda, sulphuric acid, chlorine).

One day in 1951, Bierwirth asked Vice President Robert E. Hulse, National's chemical chief: "If you had money and wanted to go into the chemical business, which branch of it would you pick?" When Hulse answered "petrochemicals," Bierwirth went upstairs from his Manhattan office at 120 Broadway to see an old friend, William G. Maguire, chairman of Panhandle Eastern Pipe Line Co. Within half an hour they made a deal to set up a jointly owned company. National Petro-Chemicals Corp. They picked Tuscola, Ill. as the plant site because it is a key junction of Panhandle Eastern's pipe lines from the gas fields of Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas and Louisiana.

Bierwirth's move into chemicals has already begun to pay off for National. Sales are up from last year, and net before taxes for the third quarter hit $6,600,000 v. $4,500,000 a year ago (aftertax earnings showed a smaller rise). Chemicals, which now account for nearly 25% of National's $470 million annual sales, will probably account for 35% next year. Eventually, chemical production is expected to account for more than half the company's profits.