Tronox Limited is an American worldwide chemical company involved in the titanium products industry with approximately 6,500 employees. Following its acquisition of the mineral sands business formerly belonging to South Africa's Exxaro Resources, Tronox is the largest fully integrated seller and marketer of

titanium dioxide Titanium dioxide, also known as titanium(IV) oxide or titania , is the inorganic compound with the chemical formula . When used as a pigment, it is called titanium white, Pigment White 6 (PW6), or CI 77891. It is a white solid that is insolubl ...

( Ti O₂)

pigment A pigment is a colored material that is completely or nearly insoluble in water. In contrast, dyes are typically soluble, at least at some stage in their use. Generally dyes are often organic compounds whereas pigments are often inorganic compo ...

, which provides brightness to applications such as coatings, plastics and paper. Tronox also sells titanium ore – the main feedstock of titanium dioxide - and zircon directly to customers. Tronox is the third-largest titanium feedstock producer, with approximately 10% of global titanium ore production; and the second-largest producer of zircon, with approximately 20% of global production. The company also has an electrolytic and

speciality chemicals Speciality chemicals (also called specialties or effect chemicals) are particular chemical products which provide a wide variety of effects on which many other industry sectors rely. Some of the categories of speciality chemicals are adhesives, agr ...

business that services the paper and battery industries. Formerly a part of the

Kerr-McGee The Kerr-McGee Corporation, founded in 1929, was an American energy company involved in oil exploration, production of crude oil, natural gas, perchlorate and uranium mining and milling in various countries. On June 23, 2006, Anadarko Petroleum ...

Chemical Corporation and based in

Oklahoma City Oklahoma City (), officially the City of Oklahoma City, and often shortened to OKC, is the capital and largest city of the U.S. state of Oklahoma. The county seat of Oklahoma County, it ranks 20th among United States cities in population, a ...

since it was spun off from its parent in 2005, the company announced in June 2012 that it was moving its headquarters to

Stamford, Connecticut Stamford () is a city in the U.S. state of Connecticut, outside of Manhattan. It is Connecticut's second-most populous city, behind Bridgeport. With a population of 135,470, Stamford passed Hartford and New Haven in population as of the 2020 ...

. The company was spun off in part to offload its parent company

's legacy of generations of

environmental dumping Environmental dumping is the practice of transfrontier shipment of waste (household waste, industrial/nuclear waste, etc.) from one country to another. The goal is to take the waste to a country that has less strict environmental laws, or enviro ...

of toxic waste across 22 states. According to one report, "Kerr-McGee, rather than pay for the environmental mess it created, decided to shift the liabilities between 2002 and 2006 into Tronox. Kerr-McGee, meanwhile, kept its valuable oil and gas assets." Tronox did not reveal the massive hidden liabilities to investors, and after they became known, Tronox dropped to a

penny stock Penny stocks are common shares of small public companies that trade for less than one dollar per share. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) uses the term "Penny stock" to refer to a security, a financial instrument which represents a ...

in 2009. In response, shareholders sued

Anadarko Petroleum Anadarko Petroleum Corporation was a company engaged in hydrocarbon exploration. It was organized in Delaware and headquartered in two skyscrapers in The Woodlands, Texas: the Allison Tower and the Hackett Tower, both named after former CEOs of ...

(successor to Kerr-McGee) for keeping the scope of the environmental disaster a secret. In addition the US federal government sued Anadarko to pay for the cleanup, and in April 2014 settled on the largest environmental contamination settlement in American history, over $5 billion.

History

The company went public in 2005, when

-based

, which had previously owned the company entirely, issued shares via an

initial public offering An initial public offering (IPO) or stock launch is a public offering in which shares of a company are sold to institutional investors and usually also to retail (individual) investors. An IPO is typically underwritten by one or more investment ...

on November 21, 2005. It became an independent company in March 2006. In the first quarter of 2006, Tronox replaced Meade Instruments on the S&P SmallCap 600 index, when Kerr-McGee distributed the rest of its

stock In finance, stock (also capital stock) consists of all the shares by which ownership of a corporation or company is divided.Longman Business English Dictionary: "stock - ''especially AmE'' one of the shares into which ownership of a company ...

in Tronox under its former NYSE symbol TRX.B, a class B

security Security is protection from, or resilience against, potential harm (or other unwanted coercive change) caused by others, by restraining the freedom of others to act. Beneficiaries (technically referents) of security may be of persons and social ...

. TRX.B started regular-way trading on March 31, 2006. In 2008, the company's stock price declined significantly, and both classes of stock became

s. In September 2008, the company's stock moved from the NYSE to OTC. On 14 January 2009, Tronox filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy. It specified that this action did not include the company's non-USA operations. In 2009, shareholders of Tronox sued

(successor to

) for having misled investors about the large environmental and other debts Tronox would inherit from its parent corporation. The environmental pollution included polluting Lake Mead in Nevada with rocket fuel, leaving behind radioactive waste piles throughout the territory of the Navajo Nation and dumping carcinogenic creosote in communities throughout the East, Midwest and South at its wood-treating facilities. In 2009, the Huntsman Corporation announced it would buy certain of Tronox's assets, such as its factories. In late 2009, Tronox terminated this deal. Tronox emerged from Chapter 11 bankruptcy on February 14, 2011. Tom Casey became CEO in October 2011. On June 15, 2012, Tronox announced that it had completed the acquisition of Exxaro Mineral Sands and combined both entities under Tronox Limited, an Australian holding company. Describing the benefits of the combination, Tronox Limited CEO Tom Casey said, "We now have the ability to sell into a lucrative titanium feedstock market while assuring our titanium dioxide customers that we have the supply to deliver quality products at reasonable prices." In April 2014, the federal government reached a $5 billion settlement with Anadarko (successor to Kerr-McGee) in the largest environmental contamination case in American history. According to one report, "Kerr-McGee, rather than pay for the environmental mess it created, decided to shift the liabilities between 2002 and 2006 into Tronox. Kerr-McGee, meanwhile, kept its valuable oil and gas assets." The cost to clean up the mess inherited by Tronox from

was estimated by the courts to be over $5 billion. There are contaminated sites in 22 states and the Navajo Nation. "Among the dozens of locations targeted for cleanup under the settlement is a former chemical manufacturing site in Nevada that has led to contamination in Lake Mead, abandoned uranium mines in and around the Navajo Nation, and a Superfund site in Gloucester, N.J., polluted by thorium." On 10 April 2019, Tronox acquired the Saudi Arabian titanium dioxide pigment manufacturer

Cristal Global Cristal Global is the world's second-largest producer of titanium dioxide and a leading producer of titanium chemicals. It was formed when The National Titanium Dioxide Company Ltd. combined with Millennium Chemicals. The headquarters are in Jedd ...

Locations

;Global headquarters *

;Mineral sands operations * Namakwa Sands, South Africa *

KwaZulu-Natal KwaZulu-Natal (, also referred to as KZN and known as "the garden province") is a province of South Africa that was created in 1994 when the Zulu bantustan of KwaZulu ("Place of the Zulu" in Zulu) and Natal Province were merged. It is locate ...

(KZN) Sands, South Africa * Cooljarloo, Western Australia * Chandala Processing Plant, Western Australia *

Pooncarie, New South Wales Pooncarie is a village in south-western New South Wales, Australia in Wentworth Shire. It is on the eastern side of the Darling River between Wentworth and Menindee. The surrounding region of Pooncarie is semi-arid with an outback landscape ri ...

;Pigment productions *

Hamilton, Mississippi Hamilton is a census-designated place and unincorporated community in Monroe County, Mississippi. Hamilton is located on U.S. Route 45, east of the Tennessee–Tombigbee Waterway, north of Columbus Air Force Base. The third largest titanium diox ...

* Botlek, Netherlands *

Bunbury, Australia Bunbury is a coastal city in the Australian state of Western Australia, approximately south of the state capital, Perth. It is the state's third most populous city after Perth and Mandurah, with a population of approximately 75,000. Located a ...

* Kwinana, Australia *

Stallingborough Stallingborough is a village and civil parish in North East Lincolnshire, England. The population of the civil parish at the 2011 census was 1,234. History Prehistory-1840 The area around Stallingborough may have been inhabited in prehistoric ...

, United Kingdom ;Electrolyic operations *

Henderson, Nevada Henderson is a city in Clark County, Nevada, United States, about southeast of downtown Las Vegas. It is the second largest city in Nevada, after Las Vegas, with an estimated population of 320,189 in 2019. The city is part of the Las Vegas Vall ...

Kerr-McGee spin-off

Kerr-McGee spun off its chemical business circa 2005-2006 after demands were made by

corporate raider A corporation is an organization—usually a group of people or a company—authorized by the state to act as a single entity (a legal entity recognized by private and public law "born out of statute"; a legal person in legal context) and r ...

and major Kerr-McGee shareholder

Carl Icahn Carl Celian Icahn (; born February 16, 1936) is an American financier. He is the founder and controlling shareholder of Icahn Enterprises, a public company and diversified conglomerate holding company based in Sunny Isles Beach. Icahn takes l ...

. Among other things, Tronox inherited several

radioactive waste Radioactive waste is a type of hazardous waste that contains radioactive material. Radioactive waste is a result of many activities, including nuclear medicine, nuclear research, nuclear power generation, rare-earth mining, and nuclear weapons r ...

sites from Kerr-McGee. These include the Cimarron Fuel Fabrication Site and the

Rare Earths Facility The Rare Earths Facility was a production plant for various chemicals and metals including thorium, uranium, and radium. It was located in West Chicago, Illinois, USA. (based partly oUS EPA NPL narrative Searchable by license number 12-0493 ...

. They are, as of 2014, still undergoing cleanup. It also inherited the Henderson, Nevada "BMI" site. This site had supplied Magnesium and other chemicals beginning around World War II. It eventually leaked

perchlorate A perchlorate is a chemical compound containing the perchlorate ion, . The majority of perchlorates are commercially produced salts. They are mainly used as oxidizers for pyrotechnic devices and to control static electricity in food packaging. Per ...

(used in rocket fuel) into the water table, which subsequently contaminated

Lake Mead Lake Mead is a reservoir formed by the Hoover Dam on the Colorado River in the Southwestern United States. It is located in the states of Nevada and Arizona, east of Las Vegas. It is the largest reservoir in the US in terms of water capacity. L ...

and the

Colorado River The Colorado River ( es, Río Colorado) is one of the principal rivers (along with the Rio Grande) in the Southwestern United States and northern Mexico. The river drains an expansive, arid drainage basin, watershed that encompasses parts of ...

, which supply water to millions of people. Exiting bankruptcy in February 2011, Tronox's Chapter 11 plan created the Anadarko litigation trust to pursue Tronox's lawsuit against Anadarko and Kerr-McGee. Tronox has transferred an 88% share of its interest in the lawsuit to the federal government.

References

External links

* {{Authority control Chemical companies of the United States Kerr-McGee Companies based in Oklahoma City American companies established in 2006 Chemical companies established in 2006 2006 establishments in Oklahoma Companies that filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2009 Companies listed on the New York Stock Exchange Companies based in Stamford, Connecticut Pollution in the United States Superfund sites Corporate spin-offs 2005 initial public offerings Tax inversions

History

Locations

Kerr-McGee spin-off

See also

References

External links