CHURCH & DWIGHT NO PRODUCT IS TOO DULL TO SHINE
By Peter Nulty

(FORTUNE Magazine) – INGENUITY and patience can turn the blandest commodity into a Christmas tree. Take bicarbonate of soda, good ol' NaHC03. Church & Dwight Co. of Princeton, New Jersey, has been making the white powder and little else for almost 150 years -- and recently finding ever more surprising uses for it. Over the past ten years annual sales and income have more than tripled. For decades the company marketed the stuff as Arm & Hammer baking soda and sold it in bulk (about $300 a ton in today's market) to other companies for use in a variety of products, from fire extinguishers to cake mixes. But Dwight Church Minton, the chief executive and a fifth-generation descendant of the founders, doesn't view his bicarbonate as a commodity. ''It's our specialty,'' he says simply. By creating a smorgasbord of new products, Minton has transformed NaHCO3 into a growth industry. Most of the ideas come from the customers; Church & Dwight's R&D is devoted mainly to improving such process technologies as ways of sorting the grains into uniform sizes. The company has combined this with its powerful brand franchise to capture an estimated 60% of the world market and hold it against much larger competitors, including Rhone Poulenc and FMC Corp. When Minton, 57, became chief executive in 1969, environmentally conscious consumers were starting to mix baking soda and soap in their washing machines to replace phosphate-rich detergents. Minton took the hint and introduced a phosphate-free -- and sodium-carbonate-ri ch -- detergent in 1970 that is now the company's largest-selling product, with about one-third of sales. In the Eighties the company added now well-known consumer products such as air fresheners, carpet deodorizers, and toothpaste. Now Minton, an avid fly fisherman who owns a Montana ranch near his favorite stream, the Madison River, is moving into industrial markets. He is getting help from recent legislation aimed at cleaning up the nation's air and water. Among the new uses: -- Armakleen, an industrial cleanser for printed circuitboards. The present cleansers of choice use chlorofluorocarbons, or CFCs, which scientists believe are depleting the ozone layer. Church & Dwight just introduced this product into a world market the company estimates to be as large as $1 billion a year. -- Armex, baking soda mixed with other ingredients to blast walls and buildings. Because sandblasting can contribute to silicosis, a lung disease, its use is most strictly regulated in Europe. As a blasting agent, baking soda has a delicate touch. The crystals have sharp edges that wear down quickly, thus removing the paint and grime without eroding the underlying surface. (The Statue of Liberty was cleaned with the stuff in 1986.) -- Just plain baking soda. Church & Dwight is beginning to sell it as an additive to municipal water supplies. Experiments in Bennington, Vermont, and Fitchburg, Massachusetts, show that it neutralizes acids that can leach lead from old pipes and from solder. Sales of the company's industrial products reached $100 million last year, and Joseph Kozloff, a security analyst for Smith Barney, sees potential for ''very high volume growth in the long term.'' Kozloff believes the company is experimenting with new products such as fungicides for plants. Minton won't comment on such rumors, but he must sense a sweet future for his uncommodity. He says the company is expanding capacity from 340,000 to 390,000 tons a year, a 15% increase.

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