Crompton and Knowles Color Inc.
Updated March 2012 | By Matthew Christopher
Crompton was originally founded in 1840 as Crompton Loom Works in Massachusetts and later merged to become Crompton & Knowles Loom Works. The company continued to build industrial looms until WWII, by which point they were diversifying into other markets including dye production. In 1954 they puchased the Neversink Dying Co. in Reading, Pennsylvania and in 1964 they built this facility less than ten miles away in Gibraltar, adding a research facility to the site in 1974. By 2000 they were producing inks for inkjet printers made by Hewlett-Packard and Lexmark as well as the dyes for Pepsi Blue.
Though Crompton Colors annual revenues were $40 million, Crompton and Knowles decided to sell it for $32 million as a part of their strategy to 'divest non-core assets' to pay off debt in 2001. It was sold to to Sensient Technologies, a company that manufactures primarily food flavorings and other chemicals used in cosmetics, pharmaceuticals, perfumes, household, and imaging products. After being renamed the Sensient Technical Colors Facility, the plant was shut down less than a year later to consolidate their production with a facility in St. Louis. Oddly, none of the 134 jobs were carried over and it did not appear that much of any equipment had been removed. The plant sat vacant until 2012 and is currently being torn down.
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