Koppers

Koppers, Inc.

Type	Public
Traded as	: KOP S&P 600 Component
Industry	Chemicals Railroad ties and other products railroad bridge construction and repair wood preservation
Founded	1988
Headquarters	Koppers Tower Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Key people	Leroy M. Ball, President and Chief Executive Officer Steven R. Lacy Senior Vice President, Administration, General Counsel and Secretary, Michael J. Zugay, Chief Financial Officer James A. Sullivan, Senior Vice President, Global Carbon Materials and Chemicals Thomas D. Loadman, Vice President and General Manager, Railroad and Utility Products and Services. Paul Goydan, Senior Vice President, Performance Chemicals, David Hillenbrand Chairman of the Board of Directors
Products	Coke wood processing Coal tar crossties Utility poles creosote carbon black phthalic anhydride
Revenue	$1.16 billion USD
Number of employees	2,100
Website	www.koppers.com

Koppers is a global chemical and materials company based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States in an art-deco 1920s skyscraper, the Koppers Tower.

The corporation is divided into three business units: Carbon and Chemicals, Railroad Products and Services, and Performance Chemicals. The company specialises in manufacturing carbon chemicals from coal tar. The five main chemicals that are produced are coal pitch for steel and aluminum production, carbon black for rubber vulcanization, creosote for wood treatment, and naphthalene and phthalic anhydride for plastics and polyester. Kopper's coal tar pitches are essential to manufacturing carbon anodes for aluminum smelting. Koppers also has extensive operations making creosote treated wood products, especially railroad ties and switches. Utility poles, foundations, decking materials, and wooden panneling are also produced by the company.

In 1943, Koppers, at the US Government's behest, built a factory in Kobuta, Pennsylvania on the left bank of the Ohio River just downriver from Beaver, to manufacture styrene-butadiene monomer, a building block used to make a form of synthetic rubber for the World War II defense effort.

In 1951, at Port Arthur, Texas, the company built a plant to manufacture the chemical monomer ethylbenzene, using as raw materials ethylene from the nearby Gulf Oil refinery, and benzene, which was a byproduct of the company's coke ovens in Pennsylvania and which was shipped down to Texas by barge. The ethylbenzene produced there was then shipped by barge back up to the Kobuta plant where it was converted to styrene monomer, and then polymerized to make expandable polystyrene. In the early 1950s, the company purchased a license to manufacture polyethylene at its Port Arthur plant. These chemical operations later were the basis for forming a new corporate entity with Sinclair Oil Corporation to form the Sinclair-Koppers Company in 1965.