Solvay S.A.
A chemical company founded in 1863, with its head office in Neder-Over-Heembeek, Brussels.
The company was founded by Ernest Solvay to produce sodium carbonate by the solvay process and later diversified into chemicals, pharmaceuticals and plastics. Before the Great War, Solvay was the largest multinational company in the world. In 1874, Solvay expanded their facilities with a new and larger plant at Nancy, France and in the same year, Ludwig Mond visited Solvay in Belgium and acquired rights to use the new technology. He and John Brunner formed Brunner, Mond & Co., at Winnington, Northwich, Cheshire, Britain. Mond was instrumental in making the Solvay process a commercial success with several refinements between 1873 and 1880. In 1884, the Solvay brothers licensed Americans William B. Cogswell and Rowland Hazard to produce soda ash in the US, and formed a joint venture (Solvay Process Company) to build and operate a plant in Solvay, New York. By the 1890s, Solvay process plants produced the majority of the world's soda ash. Solvay Indupa (Indústrias Patagonicas), an Argentine subsidiary of Solvay, was established in Río Negro Province on September 16, 1948. The plant will become the region’s leading local producer of chlorine, Polyvinyl chloride resins (PVC) and caustic soda.
Since 1911, the company has supported the Solvay Conferences in physics and chemistry that were founded by Ernest Solvay. He also founded the International Solvay Institutes for Physics and Chemistry, located in Brussels in 1912.