DuPont and Tate & Lyle, the company perhaps best-known as the maker of Splenda sweetener, are combining on a $100-million joint venture to develop a plant that will create products from renewable resources such as corn for applications such as clothing, engineered polymers and textile fibers. The plant is being built at an existing Tate & Lyle facility in Loudon. Scientists from the two companies have developed a new method to use corn to produce a product called Bio-PDO, a key ingredient in DuPont's Sorona polymer. Sorona is currently manufactured from petroleum-based PDO. Startup of the plant is scheduled for 2006.

DuPont and Tate & Lyle formed a joint venture to build a new $100-million plant at DuPont's Loudon complex to manufacture plant-based ingredients for DuPont's Sorona polymer.

   U.K.-based Tate & Lyle is also investing $75 million to expand its existing Loudon facility to boost capacity of ethanol and other projects to supply the joint venture with DuPont.
   Other technical textile projects are coming to the state, including a new Western Nonwovens plant in Clinton that will create about 40 jobs. The Los Angeles-based company, which considered other sites in Tennessee and South Carolina, will invest $2 million as it occupies an existing building as its Eastern manufacturing facility.