H\u00f6chst Aktiengesellschaft, a German chemical company from Frankfurt am Main, was established 1951. In 1965 Hoechst came to Spartanburg in a joint venture with American Hercules company. The venture was created to provide polyester fiber for local textile producers. Soon Hoechst acquired the entire operation. By the early 1970s the factory, with its two thousand workers, had become one of the area\u2019s biggest employers. Additionally, the presence of this German company with its German and American staff had turned into an international curiosity.<\/p>\n
The company chose to come to Spartanburg County because of its location. According to the calculations of one Hoechst executive, roughly eighty percent of U.S. textile mills were within a 250-mile radius of Spartanburg. Over the years, Hoechst\u2019s Spartanburg factory expanded and improved its polyester-based manufacturing line to include large-scale plastic recycling operations and polyester resin production. In 1987, as a result of Hoechst\u2019s acquisition of Celanese Corporation, the corporation\u2019s North American operations were renamed Hoechst Celanese Corporation. In 1998 Hoechst sold the Spartanburg plant to a U.S.-Mexican joint venture named KoSa.<\/p>\n
\u201cEuropean Business People Like Carolina\u2013And It\u2019s Mutual.\u201d U.S. News and World Report <\/em>72 (June 26, 1972): 62\u201363.<\/p>\n Vogl, Frank. \u201cThe Spartanburg Example: How an Old Southern Town Became \u2018Euroville.\u2019\u201d Europe: Magazine of the European Community <\/em>213 (May\u2013June 1979): 26\u201329.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" H\u00f6chst Aktiengesellschaft, a German chemical company from Frankfurt am Main, was established 1951. In 1965 Hoechst came to Spartanburg in a joint venture with American Hercules company. The venture was created to provide polyester fiber for local textile producers. Soon Hoechst acquired the entire operation. By the early 1970s the factory, with its two thousand […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":-1,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","template":"","class_list":["post-4539","entry","type-entry","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","ecms-a-z","ecms-business-and-industry","ecms-encyclopedia","ecms-h","ecms-science-and-medicine","ecms-spartanburg-county","ecms-upstate"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n