Don Thurston Blog

Is That All There Is?

Peggy Lee sings a poignant melody entitled Is That All There Is? The theme is a reminder of how fleeting events can be. Businesses are not immune.

By way of an example, in the middle of the 1950s Celanese Corporation undertook an integrated, two phase thrust into Canada with the construction of a specialty pulp mill in Prince Rupert and a sophisticated chemical plant in Edmonton. Known as Canadian Chemical and Cellulose, the Rupert process provided a specialty dissolving pulp feedstock for the chemical plant.

The project was very ambitious, requiring major amounts of capital, technology and manpower. Brown and Root contracted to build the Edmonton plant; one of their first cold weather projects. Texas based personnel were not impressed. All in all this was a very big deal. Over time various transactions yielded an integrated public company with about thirty five percent Canadian ownership.

The object was to produce derivatives of cellulose acetate for synthetic fabric, acids and methanol. The consumer will know some of the end results as liners for coats and dresses, cigarette filter and windshield washer fluid. Along the way the company expanded into fabric manufacturing and carpeting, chemicals for the mining industry and joint ventures for the production of other synthetic fibres. Research fascilities were maintained in Edmonton and Drumondville.

Sixty years on virtually none of the assets in play at the beginning are in play today. The Edmonton plant has long been decomissioned, the pulp plant is not operating, the textile operations largely do not exist and the Montreal head office is only a distant memory.

So Peggy Lee makes a point in asking Is That All There Is? Do we have a much larger version of Pickles and Chocolates? The subject is worth revisiting.

Thanks for reading!

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