History
DSM was established in 1902 as a state-owned coal mining company. Through the years the company diversified into fertilizers and other chemicals. After 1965, when the Dutch government took the decision to phase out all mining operations in the Netherlands, this diversification was accelerated. By the time the last mine closed (in 1973), DSM had transformed into a chemical company.
In 1989 the Dutch State floated 70% of its DSM shares on the Amsterdam Stock Exchange (now NYSE Euronext). The remaining 30% were floated in 1996, completing DSM’s privatization. In 1998 the company took over the Dutch food products and biotechnology group Gist-brocades. In 2000 it acquired the US company Catalytica Pharmaceuticals. In 2002 DSM sold its petrochemical division (naphtha crackers and polyolefin plants) to SABIC of Saudi Arabia. In 2003, DSM acquired the nutritional products business (including vitamins) of Roche. In 2005 NeoResins, the coating resins business of Avecia was purchased. In 2010 the Agro and Melamine business groups were sold to Orascom Construction Industries. In January 2011 DSM transferred its anti-infectives business to a 50/50 global joint venture with Sinochem Group, named DSM Sinochem Pharmaceuticals. In February 2011 DSM finalized its acquisition of US based Martek Biosciences Corporation.
In June 2012 DSM finalized the acquisition of Kensey Nash, a US based biomedical company, primarily focused on regenerative medicine, and the following month it finalized the acquisition of Ocean Nutrition Canada, the leading global provider of fish-oil derived nutritional products to the dietary supplement and food and beverage markets. On 8 August 2012 DSM announced that it had entered into an agreement to acquire Tortuga Companhia Zootécnica Agrária (Tortuga), a privately held Brazilian company manufacturing nutritional supplements for pasture raised beef and dairy cattle. In late October 2012 DSM announced that it had acquired Cargill’s cultures and enzymes business, producers of enzymes, PUFAs, vitamins, cultures, probiotics, bio actives, preservation systems and tests. On 8 November 2012, DSM announced it had entered into an agreement to acquire Fortitech, a privately held US company. Fortitech provides customized food ingredient blends for food & beverage, infant nutrition and dietary supplements industries from six production sites located worldwide.
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“History has neither the venerableness of antiquity, nor the freshness of the modern. It does as if it would go to the beginning of things, which natural history might with reason assume to do; but consider the Universal History, and then tell us,—when did burdock and plantain sprout first?”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Yet poetry, though the last and finest result, is a natural fruit. As naturally as the oak bears an acorn, and the vine a gourd, man bears a poem, either spoken or done. It is the chief and most memorable success, for history is but a prose narrative of poetic deeds.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“No one can understand Paris and its history who does not understand that its fierceness is the balance and justification of its frivolity. It is called a city of pleasure; but it may also very specially be called a city of pain. The crown of roses is also a crown of thorns. Its people are too prone to hurt others, but quite ready also to hurt themselves. They are martyrs for religion, they are martyrs for irreligion; they are even martyrs for immorality.”
—Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874–1936)