Creating history, then and now.

For over 150 years, Rain Carbon Inc. (RCI) and its heritage companies have used their calcination and distillation processes to convert industrial carbon by-products into valuable raw materials for many world industries.

RCI, is a wholly owned subsidiary of India-based Rain Industries Ltd., The company has 14 production sites and 1,750 employees across North America, Asia and Europe with more than 220 combined years of continuously evolving experience in the production of carbon-based materials.

While historical names like Kaiser, RÜTGERS, Conoco, RAG, Evonik, and numerous others make up the pillars of our experienced past, it is RCI’s culture of constant innovation, reinvention and evolution that propels us into the future.

Calcination 

RCI’s calcination roots date back to 1959, when Kaiser Aluminum and Chemical Corporation (KACC) constructed a calciner in the state of Mississippi, USA, to convert petroleum coke -- a solid carbon by-product of the oil refining industry -- into an essential raw material for the production of aluminum anodes. KACC built three more U.S. Gulf Coast calciners, and in 1988, these operations became the independently owned CII Carbon LLC (CII). CII subsequently grew through the acquisition of three additional U.S. calcining plants, including two from a Conoco joint-venture company.

Meanwhile, in 1998, Rain Calcining Limited (RCL), an independent start-up based in India, constructed Asia’s largest calcination facility in the port city of Visakhapatnam (Vizag), India. In 2005, RCL doubled its capacity through the expansion of the Vizag facility.

In mid-2007, RCL acquired CII, and the companies changed their national corporate names to Rain CII Carbon (Vizag) Limited (RCCVL) in India and Rain CII Carbon LLC (RCC) in the United States. The unified “Rain CII” brand quickly became well known as one of the world’s largest producers of calcined petroleum coke (CPC).

In 2021, RCI began commercial operation of its newest calcination facility in the Andhra Pradesh Special Economic Zone in India, increasing the company’s annual CPC production to approximately 2.4 metric tons. The company’s first vertical-shaft calciner is also equipped with a state-of-the-art flue-gas desulfurization system that removes more than 99% of the plant’s sulfur dioxide emissions, making it the most environmentally friendly calcination plant in the world.

Distillation and Advanced Materials 

RCI’s distillation roots date back to the German industrial pioneer, Julius Rütgers, who founded a company that was later to become the RÜTGERS Group. In 1849, the 18-year-old entrepreneur took over his father’s troubled wood impregnation business for the production of railway sleeper ties.

The young entrepreneur soon discovered that coal tar had the potential to be more than an impregnation agent. Rütgers set up his first distillation plant near Berlin to extract the many valuable compounds and transform them into a range of useful products. Distillation allowed RÜTGERS to greatly diversify its product line and risk profile, propelling the company’s business in new directions and launching aromatic chemistry in Germany. The demand for RÜTGERS’ products grew tremendously, and the company established itself as a leading German chemicals company.

Among other products, RÜTGERS sold aniline to producers of dyes and coatings, and in the 1910s, the company invented and produced the first synthetic plastic material based on the production of hardenable phenolic resins: the world-renowned Bakelite. Shortly after the first successful electrolysis of aluminum in the 1880s, RÜTGERS developed a new business line: providing the emerging aluminum producers with coal tar pitch as a high-performance binder for their essential carbon anodes.

A period of organic and acquisition growth followed in the second half of the 20th century as RÜTGERS strengthened itself through the integration of many renowned companies from the steel, coal tar, aluminum and chemicals industries throughout Europe and Canada. The acquisitions of Société Chimique de Selzaete in Zelzate (later RÜTGERS Belgium), Domtar (later RUETGERS Canada) in Hamilton, Handy Chemicals Ltd. (later RUETGERS Polymers) in Candiac, the Kędzierzyn-Koźle-based RUETGERS Poland Sp. z o.o. and the Neville Chemical Europe BV in Uithoorn, Netherlands (later RÜTGERS Resins BV) each contributed to the growth of RÜTGERS.

In the 1970s, RÜTGERS was integrated into RAG, a German corporation that restructured in 2007 into Evonik Group, which subsequently established the independent RÜTGERS Group. As a stand-alone group of companies, RÜTGERS Group increased its efficiency and profitability, expanded its international business activity and, most recently, implemented the joint venture RÜTGERS Severtar with a new, state-of-the-art distillation site in Cherepovets, Russia.

In 2013, RCI acquired RÜTGERS, and five years later the company created a new Advanced Materials reporting segment to reflect RCI’s increasing focus on transforming by-products of its coal tar and petrochemical feedstock distillation activities to produce raw materials that support high-growth products of the future. In 2019, the company began commercial operation of an advanced hydrogenated hydrocarbon resins production facility at its Castrop-Rauxel site in Germany. The state-of-the-art plant has a “water-white” resins production capacity of up to 50,000 tons per year and serves as the cornerstone of Rain Carbon’s Advanced Materials product segment.