The chemicals division is Borden's single largest business, accounting for 30 percent of the company's revenues.
Although sales in its chemicals division fell, productivity improvements and the pound's devaluation enabled profits to remain virtually unchanged.
The only exception, he noted, was in the chemicals division, where profits declined 83 percent, to $53 million.
The company's chemicals division had operating income of $39.7 million, compared with $34.1 million a year earlier.
Mitsui, which acquired another United States feed maker in 1987, already has an American chemicals division.
In 1993 I was named head of our global industrial chemicals division, and for the first time, most of the people who reported to me were university-trained.
In 1920 the company set up a chemicals division which manufactured ethylene glycol for use as automotive antifreeze.
The chemicals division reported earnings of $161 million, compared with $26 million a year ago.
In 1997, the chemicals division of Rhône-Poulenc was spun off into a separate company named Rhodia.
The Koppers Company announced the collapse of a $660 million deal to sell its chemicals division to a management-led group.