In 1869, nitric acid and muriatic acid (HCl) were added at Cleveland. Although their business plan emphasized mainly sulfuric acid, Caesar and Eugene sought to soften the blows from the inevitable collapse of market sectors by adding new products to their production facility in Cleveland and elsewhere. They also bought Lodi Acid Works near Pittsburgh in a 50/50 partnership with Marsh & Haywood. Caesar and Eugene began to look elsewhere for lucrative markets and built manufacturing plants in New Jersey, Delaware, West Virginia, and Indiana. As a result of the overcapacity, prices and profits in the Cleveland market collapsed. The Grasselli Chemical company prospered.īecause of the high demand for sulfuric acid in Cleveland, new sulfuric manufacturing plants soon sprung up including the construction of a plant by Marsh & Harwood directly across the street from Grasselli’s Cleveland plant. Large quantities of sulfuric acid were essential to wash the gasoline, coal oil, and the other products of distillation. In fact, by 1867 Cleveland had become the unquestioned center of the oil refining business in the United States with fifty oil refining plants. But Rockefeller’s refinery was not the only one in Cleveland. Rockefeller’s #1 refinery which was conveniently located ½ mile from Grasselli’s plant. With the startup of Grasselli’s Cleveland Plant in 1866, the plant began shipping sulfuric acid to John D.
0 kommentar(er)
