Cornerstone’s facility in Waggaman, La. is located on land formerly occupied by the Orange Grove Plantation, which was owned by the Fortier family. The property was sold in 1952 to American Cyanamid Company who broke ground on the Fortier Plant that same year. The plant was built to produce acrylonitrile and nitrogen products.
In 1957, an expansion of the plant’s sulfuric acid unit doubled its acrylonitrile production capacity. In 1965, the facility grew to four production units when the low-pressure ammonia plant named Kellog and the urea plant were constructed as part of a nitrogen products expansion program. In 1966, the original acetylene based process that made acrylonitrile was shut down and replaced with a propylene process licensed from Sohio.
The plant began to produce melamine in 1971. The Fortier sulfuric acid plant was converted into a Regen unit in 1993, allowing the site to recover waste acid from a neighboring plant. In 1993, Cytec Industries Inc. was spun off from the American Cyanamid Company to produce sulfuric acid, acrylonitrile and melamine. In 2011, Cytec Industries was renamed Cornerstone Chemical Company.
