Word: rayons
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...More than attitudes have changed. Courtaulds has increased by 29% its exports of important fibers from Britain, and is now producing at capacity in most of the 20 countries where it manufactures. The company's viscose division, which controls 10% of the world production of that staple of rayon making, increased earnings 60%, winning out over competing nylon makers in securing three-quarters of the British market for rayon tire cords. Courtaulds has expanded its acetate sales for cigarette filters, increased its output of paints, packaging films and aerosol cans...
Little Protection. Sometimes company research moves so fast that it makes a company's own products obsolete. Du Pont's Dacron is giving tough competition to the company's nylon and rayon, and Du Pont has decided to give up making rayon altogether. General Electric's recently announced silicon transistor will sell for half the price of its own germanium transistor...
Wherever a Dutchman turns these days, his gaze is apt to fall on a product of a vigorous giant known as A.K.U. (pronounced Ah-coo). For A.K.U. (short for Algemene Kunstzijde Unie, which means Amalgamated Rayon Union) produces half the nylon stockings sold in The Netherlands, as well as fibers used in half the nation's tires and seven out of ten pairs of men's slacks. Even the dikes that help keep The Netherlands above water are built with A.K.U. nylon sandbags...
...Flying Squads. A.K.U. was founded as a rayon company in 1911 by a young Dutch chemist named Jacques Coenraad Hartogs, who had learned the business while working for Courtaulds in England. Hartogs' company, which became publicly owned in 1923, prospered until World War II, which all but destroyed it. At war's end, 40% of A.K.U.'s Dutch plant lay in ruins, five of its factories in Eastern Europe had been taken over by the Communists and two of its U.S. affiliates had been seized because of partial German ownership. (A.K.U. succeeded, however, in hanging onto...
...Minister of War in The Netherlands' first postwar Cabinet. Recruited for A.K.U. in 1946 by fellow Cabinet minister (and A.K.U. director) Theodorus van Schaik, Meynen from the start preached what he called "the two-leg theory," insisted that A.K.U. must find another major product in addition to rayon. As he pushed the company pellmell into the manufacture of nylon, cellophane, viscose sponges, cable and insulation, Meynen's two-leg theory evolved into a "many legs" theory. To broaden its technical knowledge, A.K.U. set up joint ventures with Pittsburgh Plate Glass (fiber glass), B. F. Goodrich (synthetic rubber...