Olin Corporation

The Olin Corporation is a major manufacturer of ammunition (through Winchester Ammunition) and chlorine and sodium hydroxide (Olin Chlor-Alkali Products). Based in Clayton, Missouri, it traces its history to two companies, both founded in 1892: Franklin W. Olin's Equitable Powder Company of East Alton, Illinois and the Mathieson Alkali Works of Saltville, Virginia into which Olin merged, although keeping the Olin name first. After being headquartered for many years in Stamford, CT, it is now headquartered in Clayton, Missouri.

History
Starting in East Alton, Illinois as the Equitable Powder Company with the purpose of serving the Illinois coal mines and limestone quarries with explosives, Franklin W Olin saw the future of smokeless gunpowder. Olin's blasting and gunpowder company expanded ambitiously into the production of cartridges in 1898 to compete with the large East Coast ammunition companies and to supply the West from a Midwest base with reduced transportation costs. Accordingly, FW Olin and his sons John and Spencer formed the Western Cartridge Company, the name sending a message to Remington and Winchester that the battle for the western markets had a new player.

The New England ammunition companies, most notably Winchester and Remington, struck back and got their suppliers to shut off Western's sources of raw material supply in an attempt to drive them out of business.

Olin fought this by vertically integrating. Olin proceeded to buy Ecusta Paper Company (Pisgah Forest, NC), a lead company, a lead shot facility, an explosive primer operation, a cartridge brass manufacturing facility, a fiber wad facility for shotshells, and started its own brass mill.

This was fortuitous timing, done right before World War I. The Olins, through Western, made a fortune supplying ammunition for World War I. Winchester, however, made less fortuitous financial decisions, investing heavily in gun machining equipment through JP Morgan and others. When WWI ended, Winchester was saddled with huge debts they could not pay, so Winchester went into the hardware business, only to meet the Great Depression in 1929 and find reduced markets for hardware or for luxury items like new rifles and went bankrupt.

In 1931, John Olin and Western bought the famed Winchester Repeating Arms Company, which had tried so hard to put him out of business, and merged Winchester into Western Cartridge Company to create Winchester-Western in 1935. Again this was fortuitous timing, since soon WW2 was soon upon the US.

In 1944, the various Olin companies were organized under a new corporate parent, Olin Industries, Inc.  Olin Industries and its companies ran the St. Louis Arsenal and Olin's New Haven and East Alton plants each employed about 17,000 workers producing the guns and small-caliber ammunition for WW2 and again the Olins made a fortune, becoming among the wealthiest of Americans of the time.

John Olin raced thoroughbreds and raised championship hunting dogs and moved to East Hampton, New York although keeping mansions in Alton, IL and in Clayton, MO and went on an acquisition spree, buying a pharmaceutical business (E R Squibb, now part of Bristol-Myers Squibb), and acquiring and merging into, Mathieson Chemical Corporation (see below).

Also in 1892, a separate company, unrelated then to Olin, Mathieson Alkali Works, began business in Saltville, Virginia and in 1893 acquired its neighbor, the Holston Salt and Plaster Corp., and Saltville became a quintessential company town. In Saltville it produced chlorine and caustic soda, releasing a considerable amount of mercury (by the company's own estimates, up to 100 pounds per day) into the soils and the North fork of the Holston River; in the river, this mercury inevitably was converted to methylmercury via biological processes. This site was declared a Superfund site in 1982. In 1952, the Mathieson Chemical Company, as it was known by then, acquired the pharmaceutical firm of E. R. Squibb & Sons, spun off in 1968 and now part of Bristol-Myers Squibb.

Olin Industries and Mathieson Chemical Company merged in 1954 to form the Olin Mathieson Chemical Corporation, which, upon the death of Mr. Mathieson, dropped "Mathieson" and adopted the name Olin Corporation in 1969. Under the management of Franklin Olin's sons, John M. Olin and Spencer Truman Olin, it diversified into a wide variety of businesses including forest and paper products, pharmaceuticals (buying ER Squibb, later sold and now part of Bristol-Myers Squibb), plastics and cellophane, bauxite mining (Olin Aluminum), nailing tools (Ramset) and even camping and skiing (Olin Skis Company) gear manufacturing and home construction. After the merger in 1954, Olin Mathieson Chemical Corporation had 35,000 employees, 46 domestic and 17 foreign plants with production and sales in drugs and pharmaceuticals, paper, cosmetics, fertilizer, a wide variety of chemicals, ammonia, hydrazine, pesticides, antifreeze and other automotive specialties, rocket engines, and arms and ammunition, according to the book Winchester An American Legend by R. L. Wilson, Random House 1991.

It seemed as if John Olin wanted Olin, the owner of Winchester-Western, to match DuPont, the owner of Remington, in size and power. John M. Olin in the Dec. 1953 issue of Fortune explained it this way: "The whole purpose of our plan is that we can never be attacked, I hope, on all fronts. Our base is broad enough so that we can move in almost any direction. "

It turned out the direction was toward chemicals, as the chemical business expanded while the ammunition and brass business grew more slowly. As a result, chemical managers (notably John Henske and John Johnstone) took over management of Olin Corporation. John M. Olin retired in 1963 and in 1964, under chemical management, Olin brought in hardware executives to run Winchester and introduced cheap forged metal parts into the formerly high-quality machined Winchester line, such as its famed Winchester Model 70, and lost the quality reputation Winchester had so meticulously crafted under John M. Olin.

John Olin retired in 1963 and by 1970 the company began to sell off acquired businesses. Olin Corporation has been continually shrinking except for brief expansion in the early 1980s. To maintain the chemicals, firearms and ammunition businesses in the face of losses, Olin started selling off property and the newly acquired businesses, generally at huge losses.

Olin Brass was an exception, developing new copper alloys that were in demand for the rapidly growing electronics and appliance markets. Former managers of Olin's Brass Division took over management of the company in the mid 1980s from the chemical managers and the chemicals businesses began to suffer losses.

A decade later, after a decline in the chemical businesses, Olin spun off its specialty chemicals business on February 8, 1999 as Arch Chemicals, Inc. and went back to the mid-Western portion of its roots with just ammunition, brass and chlor-alkali. Olin has thus, today, abandoned the 1953 "broad based flexibility" business plan of John M. Olin noted above, and is now narrowly focused and a small shadow of its former glory days while run by John M Olin.

After declines in business at Winchester, Olin on December 12, 1980 made the decision to sell Winchester firearms, but with few buyers interested, had to settle for a spin-off to the Winchester employees under the name US Repeating Arms Company. Olin kept the Winchester brand name and licensed it to US Repeating Arms Company. US Repeating Arms maintained the high-quality lines, but introduced new economy models to compete for the low end of the market, while also trying to keep the high end of the market. US Repeating Arms was unsuccessful with both, and was sold to Browning Arms, and its parent Fabrique National, Herstal, Belgium (FNH).

After further declines, Olin sold its European Winchester ammunition business to the French company GIAT of Versailles, France (a commercialized spin-off of the French Ministry of Defense) and GIAT's subsidiary FNH of Herstal, Belgium officially also took over ownership and management, again licensing the Winchester trademark which Olin kept for its North American ammunition operations.

After still further re-evaluations of its business, Olin announced the sale of its Brass Division in October 2007, and lost $140 million in the sale. Olin Brass is now owned by Global Brass.

Having previously shed specialty chemicals, paper, ordnance, aerospace, electronic materials, and pharmaceuticals, Olin had now reduced itself to just ammunition and chlor-alkali production and sales. Olin is the 3rd largest chlor-alkali producer in the USA.

Although the ammunition business was and is strong due to the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, Olin has since 2004 been slowly moving pieces of Winchester from unionized East Alton, Illinois to a non-union plant in Oxford, Mississippi, starting with rimfire cartridge production, then load and pack operations, and 2010 announcement of moving the Winchester Ammunition centerfire manufacturing to Oxford, Mississippi after the union voted down ratification twice to keep the jobs in Illinois for at least seven years with a new concessions plan.