The company was founded in 1885 in San Francisco as a partnership between two young Europeans; a German, John Stauffer Sr., and a Frenchman, Christian de Guigne. Ships exporting wheat to Europe used stone from the chalk cliffs of Dover as ballast. This discarded ballast became the inexpensive raw material for precipitated calcium carbonate the newly formed company. The company was incorporated by John Stauffer Sr., who died on March 4, 1940, at the age of 78.[3][4][5][6]
In 1931, the company announced plans for a new manufacturing subsidiary, the Pacific Hard Rubber Company.[7]
Hans Stauffer, nephew of founder John Stauffer Sr, who joined his uncle at Stauffer Chemicals in 1920 and who retired as president in 1967, died in 1986.[6]
John Stauffer Jr., director emeritus of the company and son of the company's founder, died in 1972. The John Stauffer Laboratory for Physical Chemistry, the John Stauffer Chemistry Building at Stanford University, and the John Stauffer Science Center at Whittier College are all named after him.[8][9]
The company was in the headlines in the mid-1980s for selling its design for a chemical plant to make phosphorus trichloride to Krebs A.G., a Swiss company. The plant modeled after a Stauffer plant in Pennsylvania, was subsequently built by Krebs for El Nasr Pharmaceutical Company of Egypt. Phosphorus trichloride is well known for its dual use capacity as a precursor for the manufacture of organophosphates including both pesticides and nerve agents such as Sarin and Tabun.[13]
^"New Industry Launched. Pacific Hard Rubber Company Announces Plans for Factory Representing $100,000 Investment". Los Angeles Times. October 25, 1931. p. D1. Establishment of a new industry in Los Angeles with an initial investment of approximately $100,000 in plant and equipment and which will employ at its opening about fifty men was announced yesterday by John Stauffer, Jr., when he made known the formation of the Pacific Hard Rubber Company.... The new company is owned and controlled by the Stauffer Chemical Company