As the date of the divestiture of its Performance Chemicals segment draws closer, DuPont (Wilmington, Delaware / USA; www.dupont.com) is starting to lend more life to the new business. The company on 18 December announced that following the spin-off, Performance Chemicals will be named The Chemours Company, in a nod to “the science of chemistry and the heritage of the du Pont family origins in Nemours, France.”

Once the divestiture is complete – the separation is scheduled to be wrapped up in mid-2015 – Chemours will be a new publicly traded titanium dioxide, fluoroproducts and chemicals solutions provider. The company will be headed by Mark Vergnano, while BC Chong and Thierry Vanlacker will remain in charge as heads of the Titanium Technologies and Fluoroproducts businesses respectively. Chemicals Solutions will be headed by Christian Siemer.

Chemours will have about 9,100 employees spread across 37 production facilities in 12 different countries. Commenting on this latest step, DuPont CEO Ellen Kullman said, “Today's announcements continue our solid progress to complete the separation of Performance Chemicals and create two strong, publicly traded companies with distinct value creation strategies.”