page_title: American Enka Company
section_title: Later years, acquisition by BASF, and legacy
hierarchical_section_title: American Enka Company / Later years, acquisition by BASF, and legacy
caption_attribution_description: English: Former site of Liberty Fibers/BASF/American Enka Company in Lowland, Tennessee. The City of Morristown has since annexed the site.
context_page_description: The American Enka Company was an American company that was the nation's largest rayon fiber manufacturer. Founded in 1928, its research division developed such things as Tyrex, improved rayon and nylon, and by-products for detergent makers and paper mills. It helped bolster the economies of Western North Carolina, West Virginia, Eastern Kentucky, Eastern Tennessee, Northern Georgia and Northern Alabama during the Great Depression and thereafter; its founding in 1928 by Dutch capital led the way for German, Swiss, and British investments in the American South, and it was one of the companies on the original Fortune 500 list.
context_section_description: In the early 1980s, the American Enka 
  began to restructure itself to remain competitive in the American marketplace because it was hard hit by imports from the Far East.  Toward the end of 1985, the ENKA was purchased by the Badische Corporation; and its fibers operation combined with those of Badische's to form BASF Corporation Fibers Division.
  During the mid-1990s AkzoNobel purchased back a portion of the BASF operation and it was named AkzoNobel Nonwovens.  It began to produce a nonwoven named Colback which was/is used in carpet backing, automotive and industrial applications and Geosynthetics Products used in the building and environmental markets.  After AkzoNobel's acquisition of Britain's Courtaulds Fibers in 1998, a new company was formed in 2000 that combined Courtaulds Fibers and AkzoNobel Nonwovens to successively become Colbond.  Actually AkzoNobel divested all of its fibers division in 2000 to form a new company called Acordia based in Spondon, England, but its management was still located in Arnhem, Netherlands, home of AkzoNobel.
  Today what began as the ENKA in Asheville, North Carolina, and the part that became Colbond with its overseas plants are now divisions of London, England-based Low & Bonar.  Colbond, Inc., in Asheville is the only Low & Bonar holding in the United States.  Plans were announced in 2008 to expand its Asheville Geosynthetics department.  Some of the ENKA's manufacturing operations in the United States became part of Union Carbide, a Dow chemical subsidiary.  Whatever ENKA manufacturing operations BASF still had in Asheville had been phased out in 2008 and moved to other manufacturing sites.
caption: The former Enka plant site in Lowland, Tennessee
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