M. A. Hanna Company was an iron ore processing company located in Cleveland, Ohio, United States.

Origin

The origins of the M. A. Hanna Co. are with Daniel F. Rhodes. In the 1840s Rhodes had founded Rhodes & Company which mined

coal Coal is a combustible black or brownish-black sedimentary rock, formed as rock strata called coal seams. Coal is mostly carbon with variable amounts of other elements, chiefly hydrogen, sulfur, oxygen, and nitrogen. Coal is formed when ...

in the

Mahoning Valley The Youngstown–Warren–Boardman, OH–PA Metropolitan Statistical Area, typically known as the Mahoning Valley (and historically the Steel Valley), is a metropolitan area in Northeast Ohio and Western Pennsylvania the United States, with th ...

Mark Hanna Marcus Alonzo Hanna (September 24, 1837 – February 15, 1904) was an American businessman and Republican politician who served as a United States Senator from Ohio as well as chairman of the Republican National Committee. A friend and p ...

, the national

Republican Republican can refer to: Political ideology * An advocate of a republic, a type of government that is not a monarchy or dictatorship, and is usually associated with the rule of law. ** Republicanism, the ideology in support of republics or agains ...

political figure, then married into the Rhodes family setting the stage for a change. It became Hanna Mining in 1885. In the mid-1860s the company expanded into iron ore

mining Mining is the extraction of valuable minerals or other geological materials from the Earth, usually from an ore body, lode, vein, seam, reef, or placer deposit. The exploitation of these deposits for raw material is based on the economic ...

in the area around

Lake Superior Lake Superior in central North America is the largest freshwater lake in the world by surface areaThe Caspian Sea is the largest lake, but is saline, not freshwater. and the third-largest by volume, holding 10% of the world's surface fresh wa ...

. Incorporation took place in 1922 and was named as the M.A. Hanna Company. In 1929 the Hanna Company transferred its blast furnaces,

coke oven Coke is a grey, hard, and porous coal-based fuel with a high carbon content and few impurities, made by heating coal or oil in the absence of air—a destructive distillation process. It is an important industrial product, used mainly in iron ...

s, and other materials to

National Steel Corporation The National Steel Corporation (1929–2003) was a major American steel producer. It was founded in 1929 through a merger arranged by Weirton Steel with some properties of the Great Lakes Steel Corporation and M.A. Hanna Company with headquar ...

for stock in NSC. Hanna's bituminous coal properties were put into the newly formed Consolidation Coal Company in 1945 in return for CCC stock.

1950s

In the early 1950s the company began

diversification Diversification may refer to: Biology and agriculture * Genetic divergence, emergence of subpopulations that have accumulated independent genetic changes * Agricultural diversification involves the re-allocation of some of a farm's resources to ...

under George Humphrey producing high-grade iron ore pellets and establishing

Iron Ore Company of Canada Iron Ore Company of Canada (often abbreviated to IOC) (french: Compagnie Minière IOC) is a Canadian-based producer of iron ore. The company was founded in 1949 from a partnership of Canadian and American M.A. Hanna Company. It is now owned by ...

. Hanna also acquired interests in mineral companies in

Latin America Latin America or * french: Amérique Latine, link=no * ht, Amerik Latin, link=no * pt, América Latina, link=no, name=a, sometimes referred to as LatAm is a large cultural region in the Americas where Romance languages — languages derived f ...

as well as beginning the mining of

nickel Nickel is a chemical element with symbol Ni and atomic number 28. It is a silvery-white lustrous metal with a slight golden tinge. Nickel is a hard and ductile transition metal. Pure nickel is chemically reactive but large pieces are slow ...

Oregon Oregon () is a state in the Pacific Northwest region of the Western United States. The Columbia River delineates much of Oregon's northern boundary with Washington, while the Snake River delineates much of its eastern boundary with Idaho. T ...

and

silicon Silicon is a chemical element with the symbol Si and atomic number 14. It is a hard, brittle crystalline solid with a blue-grey metallic luster, and is a tetravalent metalloid and semiconductor. It is a member of group 14 in the periodic ta ...

Washington Washington commonly refers to: * Washington (state), United States * Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States ** A metonym for the federal government of the United States ** Washington metropolitan area, the metropolitan area centered o ...

. In 1958 Hanna's subsidiary, the Hanna Coal & Ore Company, became the independent Hanna Mining Company while M. A. Hanna continued with

mineral In geology and mineralogy, a mineral or mineral species is, broadly speaking, a solid chemical compound with a fairly well-defined chemical composition and a specific crystal structure that occurs naturally in pure form.John P. Rafferty, ed. (2 ...

sales and in its investment firm work until liquidation in 1965.

1970s

By the early 1970s, Hanna Mining was the world's second-largest producer of iron ore with

United States Steel United States Steel Corporation, more commonly known as U.S. Steel, is an American integrated steel producer headquartered in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, with production operations primarily in the United States of America and in several countries ...

being the largest. Also during this decade, Hanna secured interests in

petroleum Petroleum, also known as crude oil, or simply oil, is a naturally occurring yellowish-black liquid mixture of mainly hydrocarbons, and is found in geological formations. The name ''petroleum'' covers both naturally occurring unprocessed crud ...

, low sulfur coal, and mineral exploration. Hanna executives believed that the name Hanna Mining did not reflect the entire scope of what the company embodied and the name returned to M. A. Hanna Company in March 1985. On October 6, 1978,

Hanna Mining Company M. A. Hanna Company was an iron ore processing company located in Cleveland, Ohio, United States. Origin The origins of the M. A. Hanna Co. are with Daniel F. Rhodes. In the 1840s Rhodes had founded Rhodes & Company which mined coal in the Mahoni ...

sold the Escanaba & Lake Superior Railroad to John C. Larkin, a businessman from Minneapolis who had organized a passenger excursion on the railroad earlier in the decade. During the 1980s under CEO Martin D. Walker, M. A. Hanna began acquiring

plastic Plastics are a wide range of synthetic or semi-synthetic materials that use polymers as a main ingredient. Their plasticity makes it possible for plastics to be moulded, extruded or pressed into solid objects of various shapes. This adaptab ...

and

polymer A polymer (; Greek '' poly-'', "many" + ''-mer'', "part") is a substance or material consisting of very large molecules called macromolecules, composed of many repeating subunits. Due to their broad spectrum of properties, both synthetic a ...

companies while

divest In finance and economics, divestment or divestiture is the reduction of some kind of asset for financial, ethical, or political objectives or sale of an existing business by a firm. A divestment is the opposite of an investment. Divestiture is a ...

ing itself of mining and energy property. Hanna purchased Burton Rubber Processing Company in 1986 and other polymer industries totaling sales of $1.1 billion in 1990. By 1993, M. A. Hanna's revenue from polymer processing was 99% of all revenue. By 1998, annual sales reached $2.3 billion annually. Hanna merged with polyvinyl chloride giant Geon Company, a former division of the B. F. Goodrich Company that became a separate entity in 1993. The merger produced

PolyOne Corporation Avient Corporation is a global manufacturer of specialized polymer materials headquartered in Avon Lake, Ohio. Its products include thermoplastic compounds, plastic colorants and additives, thermoplastic resins, vinyl resins, thermoplastic compo ...

, a company worth $3.5 billion and ranked in the

Fortune 1000 The Fortune 1000 are the 1,000 largest American companies ranked by revenues, as compiled by the American business magazine ''Fortune''. It only includes companies which are incorporated or authorized to do business in the United States, and for ...

.Case Western Reserve, Encyclopedia of Cleveland History: M. A. Hanna
/ref>

References

*F.S. Smithers & Co. The Iron Ore Industry and the Cleveland-Cliffs Iron Co., the Hanna Mining Co., the M. A. Hanna Co. (1960).

External links

PolyOne Corporation
{{Authority control Companies based in Cleveland Defunct mining companies of the United States