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Port St. Joe on the Go A lost city makes a comeback with a chemical process complex that's bringing in new life and money Port St. Joe, Fia., a small town on the Gulf of Mexico, would be a prize subject for one of those "they-said-itcouldn't-be-done" commercials. A four-plant chemical processing complex, soon to be joined by a fifth plant, has roused the town (population: about 5000) from what historians said would be an "everlasting commercial sleep." Three firms—Michigan Chemical, Glidden, and Allied Chemical—have come in with plants in the past three years, drawn by the catalytic presence of St. Joe Paper Co. and its chemical by-products. The fifth plant will be put up by Florida Gulf Fibre Co., a new company. The schedule calls for it to start producing semichemieal corrugated paperboard in 1961. Cost of the plant: $13.5 million. It will use hardwoods instead of pine. Sleepy Past. Port St. Joe lies on a deep water harbor, about 100 miles southwest of Tallahassee. It's the historic site where a convention in 1838
drafted Florida's first constitution. A rosy future seemed in store for the area. But a few years later, catastrophe hit—yellow fever and a tidal wave wiped out the city, then called St. Joseph. That's when, historians said, "Business ceased and stole away into the night. St. Joseph, with her . . . resources and beautiful bay, has sunk into an everlasting commercial sleep." The prophesy didn't pan out quite that way, however. Today, in contrast, a rejuvenated city looks at its growing assets—$21 million in completed and planned chemical construction in the past three years alone. Over the past decade, population and bank deposits have more than doubled. The harbor, scene of the tempest that struck in 1843, is being deepened to handle additional ships attracted by the new industrial complex. Start in Paper. St. Joe Paper, the daddy of the complex, started up in Port St. Joe in 1938. Its kraft paper mill has a daily rated capacity of 1300 tons of linerboard and corrugating
PAPER SETS THE STAGE. Port St. Joe's first big industrial product was rolls of kraft paper turned out by the 1300 ton-per-
medium. In addition to using pulpwood from 1 million acres of companyowned land in the Gulf area, it buys from other producers to meet its need for 600,000 cords of pulp wood yearly. For every ton of output, St. Joe recovers 2.5 gallons of crude sulfate turpentine. It sells this to Glidden, which refines it in Jacksonville. In 1955, the lure of by-products from the kraft paper process alerted Glidden's chemicals division to Port St. Joe. One such by-product was crude sulfate skimmings, a rich source of tall oil. St. Joe was offering about 50,000 tons of skimmings annually, so Glidden made plans to move in. Today, Glidden runs a $4 million tall oil refining plant just across the coastal highway from the paper company and gets its raw material directly by overhead pipeline. Glidden stores the material in a 1 million gallon storage unit. The solids and spent liquor, after acid treatment, are sent back to the paper mill for use in the pulp process. Glidden uses the rest of the raw material to make crude and distilled tall oil, high purity tall oil fatty acids, rosin, pitch, and tall oil heads. The firm's organic chemicals department operates the 40-man plant. The General Chemical division of Allied opened an aluminum sulfate plant in the same area in 1957. Again St. Joe Paper was the lure. The plant supplies all of St. Joe's requirements of alum to set paper size and has enough left over to handle about 30%
day mill of St. Joe Paper. Chemical needs and by-products from the mill attracted two chemical plants within two years
Growing Chemical Operations Rouse Port St Joe
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PRODUCTION FROM THE SEA. Magnesium hydroxide precipitated from sea water is heated to make magnesia in these two hearth furnaces at Michigan Chemical's $5 million plant which started up at Port St. Joe late last year
ALUM FROM ALLIED. Allied Chemical's General Chemical division has made alum at Port St. Joe since 1957. Output supplies three pulp and paper mills in Florida 40
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of the demand of St. Regis Paper in Pensacola and part of that of Container Corp. of America at Brew-ton, Ala. Sea Water Attraction. Sea water in St. Joseph's Bay, the landlocked harbor for which Port St. Joe is noted, proved the next attraction for the chemical industry. Two years ago, Michigan Chemical surveyed the Gulf Coast, chose the city for a plant to make magnesium oxide from sea water. Reason for the choice: clean sea water, undiluted by fresh water runoff. Late last year, Michigan's $5 million plant went on stream with a design capacity of 125 tons a day. Output is about half of capacity now. The plant makes both chemical lightburned and refractory-grade magnesia. Another product of the sea, oyster shells, is used in the process. Michigan burns shells to form quicklime, which supplies oxygen to make the magnesium oxide. All chemical sites in Port St. Joe are close to or front on the Gulf County Canal, which connects to the Intracoastal Waterway extending from Texas to St. Marks, Fla. Joining the lures of water for travel and processing is a natural gas lateral line which will open this year. It will link the city with a newly laid Houston Corp. pipeline that runs from Louisiana to Miami. The Port St. Joe area is even braced for the missile age. The Eglin Gulf Test Range is providing employment and bringing in new residents. Vitro, for example, will import several technical people to man equipment and track missiles. Sum of all this activity is a new industrial center for Florida, one in which chemical process industries play a major role. As a result, people in the area are talking of new department stores, golf courses, houses, and other facilities to handle an expected influx of citizens. Leroy Bowdoin, principal of the local high school, has had his problems. "We've expanded here four times in seven years," he points out "and I guess we're going to do it again." Actually, no one in Port St. Joe denies it's a happy situation, this industrial growth. Thomas Coldewey, a St. Joe Paper vice president, smiles when he says, "We estimate the new Florida Gulf Fibre Co. plant will bring about $5 million in new benefits to the county." Harry H. Saunders, another vice president at St. Joe, echoes the enthusiasm by adding, "We're just beginning to grow."
Armour Shifts Research Company decentralization capped by putting all research on divisional basis Decentralization at Armour & Co., has caught up with research. Eliminated as such: the company's central research unit (C&EN, April 4, page 4 5 ) . All research now will be done on a divisional basis. The move does not call for dropping any personnel; employees in central research (over 100 scientists and administrators) are being reassigned to four other research labs and pilot plants. The transition should take about a year, says Armour. According to executive vice president Edward W. Wilson, "The move is in line with the company's decentralization concept of management." A major reorganization of the company, started in 1957, continues. Moreover, says Armour, the shift will improve and expand the firm's research, provide better and more modern research facilities. Net result, Mr. Wilson adds, will be an increase in research activity. This year's research budget is bigger than 1959's; even more money will be spent next year. Operating divisions which will be given direct responsibility for all research and development activity related to their operations include agricultural chemicals, Armour Alliance Industries, grocery products, industrial chemicals, leather, and pharmaceuticals. Stockyards Out. When the research shift is completed, Armour will have completely left Chicago's stockyards. Since the whole reorganization began, the company has been closing down its operations there because of obsolescence. Slaughtering, for instance, was moved to several other midwestern cities. By mid-1959, only central research was still operating in the yards. To accommodate decentralized research, Armour is building a new laboratory for industrial chemicals in McCook, 111., near its chemical operations. And at Bell wood, 111., a research lab and pilot plant for freezedried foods is going up. In the planning stage is a research facility for the foods division. This one, like all the other labs, will be in the Chicago area. The pharmaceutical division's laboratory is in Kankakee, 111., site of Armour's drug manufacturing setup.
Decentralizing research, says Armour, has actually been in progress for several years. Before the companywide decentralization started, all the divisions performed their own short term research. Central research handled long term problems. But over the past few years, some of the divisions began taking on long range projects. Abolishing central research now amounts to a speed-up of what was more or less of an evolutionary program. Although central research is being eliminated, some basic research programs will be followed. Projects which don't fit in directly with any division's business will go on, too. Administration of these, though not worked out yet, is being developed. So is a method for coordinating the work of the different laboratories from company headquarters.
European Tariff Battle Looms Twenty-nation economic meeting tries to solve problems of common market and free trade The 20-nation western economic organization formed in Paris in January (C&EN, Jan. 25, page 25) was back in Paris recently to try to solve some of the problems arising from the development of the two economic blocks in Europe. The two economic unions brewing up trouble in trade and, possibly, politics are the Common Market (West Germany, France, Italy, Holland, Belgium, and Luxembourg) and the European Free Trade Association (Britain, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Switzerland, Austria, and Portugal). Problems between the two groups arise from a battle in reducing tariffs. Each has a schedule of tariff reductions and increases spread out over the period up to 1970. But the Common Market wants to speed up tariff changes and would like to abolish all trade restrictions among its members as fast as possible. EFTA also plans to get its schedule into full operation sooner. EFTA, a late starter in the economic union race, can't keep up with the CM's pace, wants every effort to be made to merge CM and EFTA eventually or at least build up freetrade reciprocity. It feels weak in
face of CM's greater industrial might and Germany's industrial and trade dominance. And it is hurt by U.S. endorsement of CM tactics. The "twenty," formed originally to help avoid a trade war in Europe and to loosen up trade all over the West, has come up with some valuable moves after the recent Paris meeting. A small secretariat has been given the job of giving a really close look at all tariff decisions and proposals of CM and EFTA. It will carefully examine the effect on tariffs of any of three possible changes coming up on July 1. These are: • EFTA's proposal for an all-round 20% cut in European tariffs. • CM's proposal for a 20% reduction of its internal tariffs and moves for creating a common external tariff. • Straightforward application of the originally planned 10% internal CM tariff reduction and EFTA's 20% internal reduction. Individual governments can ask the secretariat to study the impact of the three alternatives on particular products. Firm progress and the inevitable role of CM are getting more widely recognized in meeting after meeting between governments' trade experts and businessmen. U.S. official endorsement of CM's push to lower tariffs quickly, and extension of lower rates to some non-CM countries (including the U.S.) has shocked and embittered EFTA members, especially Britain. Britain sees U.S. encouragement of CM's plans from a political plane, considers the political-economiccultural alliance between the U.S. and U.K. threatened.
PHS to Expand Work on Environmental Health The House of Representatives has voted to give the U.S. Public Health Service $25.6 million for work on environmental health hazards for fiscal 1961. If the Senate goes along with the House, the 1961 appropriation will be $10 million above the 1960 appropriation for this work. The figure was recommended by the House Appropriations Committee after studying a report it had requested from PHS on this problem. The committee wanted to know what needs to be done and what is being done in APRIL
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such fields as radiation protection, air and water pollution control, and the effects of new industrial products and processes. In response, PHS proposed to or ganize a new high-level unit to handle research, training, and enforcement in this field. This unit, said PHS, should use grants and contracts with other groups and its own direct operations to achieve its objective. Although the PHS report does not spell out exactly how such a unit would fit into present activities, it would probably mean re alignment of present units. PHS does not expect to have a spe cific organization plan for this pro posed unit until a special task force of PHS scientists completes a study on the whole mission and organization of PHS. Dr. Leroy E. Burney, PHS Surgeon General, testified at the com mittee's hearings that he expects this task force to recommend a major or ganizational unit to deal with environ mental health problems. Among specific research problems with which PHS expects the new unit to be concerned are: • The long-time effects of low-level radiation on health. • The constituents of polluted air and water, their effects on human health, and what can be done to con trol them. • Determination of the effects of low-level exposure to chemicals. • Development and study of new methods in toxicology and epidemiol ogy. In fiscal 1961, according to Dr. David E. Price, Assistant Surgeon Gen eral, PHS will use the funds to expand direct operations and research grants in the fields of air, water, radiology, health, milk, food, general sanitation, occupational health, and accident pre vention.
BRIEFS C. F. Braun is designing and building the resin compounding equipment, warehouse, and administration build ing for B. F. Goodrich Chemical's vinyl resin plant now going up near Long Beach, Calif. Braun expects to finish the plant in July.
Monsanto Chemical will more than double its capacity for liquid sulfur di oxide at Monsanto, 111., by next month. 42
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Success Ladder for Chemstrand Scientists A new ladder to success for Chemstrand research scientists is in the making. The com pany plans to set up a hierarchy of positions, each equivalent to current administrative posts, as shown above. First appointments will be made later this year. Chemstrand designed the plan to foster and encourage independent creative research effort by sci entists within its research center. Too often, says president E. A. O'Neal, "We have promoted the man to reward him and in so doing, we have drawn his (research) energy and creativity into a tangle of administrative duties." Research people will henceforth be recognized "through positions and compensation worthy of the scientist's effort."
Tidewater Oil's Danish subsidiary, Dansk Veedol, will build a 20,000 barrel-per-day refinery at Kalundborg, Denmark. Scheduled to go on stream Sept. 1, 1961, the refinery will be con structed by Foster Wheeler and So ciété Five-Penhoet, Paris. Dansk Veedol expects to spend $24.3 million on capital improvements in Scandanavia in the next two years.
Pacific Vegetable Oil is selling $2.5 million worth of convertible deben-
tures. Part of the proceeds will be used to pay off $600,000 of promissory notes, part to buy out a minority interest in a subsidiary, and the balance for more working capital. Ionics plans to sell 75,000 shares of common stock, worth close to $1.5 million at present market prices, to raise money to increase its working capital and expand its research. Part of the funds also may be used for construction of new quarters at Waltham, Mass.
