U.S. Rubber & Uniroyal in Middlebury – Part II

#Middlebury #Chemtura

The Preston Hill Inn, shown here, was formerly known as the Oxford Management & Research Center of Uniroyal. Its name was changed in 1971. (Robert Rafford scan)

By DR. ROBERT L. RAFFORD

The name of the Oxford Management & Research Center of Uniroyal, Inc. was changed to the Preston Hill Inn in 1971. The Preston Hill Inn and Conference Center became a community gathering place for a number of years, and many area civic groups held functions there. A 1977 newspaper advertisement in the Naugatuck Daily News contained an invitation to a “Mother’s Day Sunday Buffet,” offering a full meal with “Steamship Round of Beef au jus, Baked Chicken Valdestona, Sweet & Sour Shrimp or Ravioli Parmigiana,” – for just $7.50 for adults, and $4.50 for children under 10! Wedding receptions also were held there into the 1980s.

Companies do not stand still, and in 1985, International Business Machines Corp. bought the headquarters of Uniroyal Inc., which consisted of 1,300 undeveloped acres in Middlebury, Oxford and Southbury, and 106 acres containing the Uniroyal headquarters building and the Preston Hill Inn. IBM maintained some offices on the Uniroyal campus near the Preston Hill Inn.

The following year, B. F. Goodrich, the nation’s third-largest tire producer, combined their tire business with Uniroyal Inc., then the fifth largest, to be called Uniroyal-Goodrich Tire Company. The impact on the area was small; Uniroyal had no tire-making facilities in the state, but had 600 employees at the corporate headquarters in Middlebury, 200 of them affiliated with Uniroyal Chemical Company. The new tire company had 21,000 employees worldwide, with headquarters in Akron, Ohio. Uniroyal had a corporate debt of about $1 billion, and they were looking for a buyer for their chemical division.

In 1990, Uniroyal was bought by the French tire maker Michelin et Cie. Six years later, in 1996, Crompton & Knowles Corp., the largest maker of textile dyes in North America, bought the Uniroyal Chemical Corp. for $1.4 billion in a stock swap. The company then became the Uniroyal-Crompton Corp. When research chemist Lisa Quint retired in 2002, the company had gone through more changes than she could have imagined. But that was not the end of the story for the Middlebury company.

Two years later, the Crompton Corporation (as it was then called) of Greenwich, Connecticut, announced it would relocate its headquarters to Middlebury by the end of 2002. In 2005, Crompton merged with the Great Lakes Chemical Corporation of Indianapolis, changed its name to Chemtura and cut its workforce by eight percent. It was predicted the merger would make the company No. 3 among United States specialty chemical makers.

In 2006, Bridgestone filed a lawsuit against Crompton and Chemtura, charging that they and others routinely attempted to reduce output to limit supplies and thus raise prices. It was reported the defendants pleaded guilty and paid a $50 million fine. By 2008, Chemtura Corp., employing 5,000 worldwide, with 500 in Connecticut, slashed its workforce by 20 percent, to save $50 million.

The following year, Chemtura hired a restructuring advisory firm, but the same month filed for bankruptcy. Still functioning by 2011, that year Chemtura announced plans to build a manufacturing facility in China. In 2012, Chemtura donated $140,000 to the United Way of Greater Waterbury, with $90,000 coming from employee contributions and fundraising, and the remainder from the corporation.

In 2016, Chemtura had a $2.5 billion acquisition offer from Germany’s Lanxess Corporation, and the boards of both companies approved the deal, which closed the next year, 2017. Lanxess acquired the sites in Naugatuck and Middlebury, making it one of the world’s largest suppliers of lubricant and flame-retardant additives. The following year, the company moved its internal services and administration offices from Middlebury to Shelton.

You are urged to join the Middlebury Historical Society by going online at MiddleburyHistoricalSociety.org or visiting them on Facebook. Questions about membership can be sent to Bob at robraff@comcast.net.