RHONE-POULENC RORER

Rhone-Poulenc Rorer is a French chemical manufacturer and producer of organic chemicals, synthetic fibers, and pharmaceuticals. The company also expanded into the production of plastics, fine specialty chemicals, films for packaging, electromagnetic tapes, and communications and copying systems, as well as textiles, glues, paints, varnishes, and agricultural chemicals. While the bulk of the firm’s sales were in France, it developed important markets in other western European countries, the Americas, Africa, Australia, the Middle East, and the Far East. Rhone-Poulenc was merged with Hoechst Aktiengesellschaft in 1999 to create the French-German pharmaceutical firm Aventis.