E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Company is a chemical company more commonly referred to as the DuPont company. The company was established in 1802 by Pierre Samuel du Pont de Nemours (1771-1834) and his son Eleuthère Irénée du Pont (1771-1834). The company began with the production of gunpowder. The du Pont’s purchased a mill site on the banks of the Brandywine River just North of Wilmington, Delaware.

The Belin plant in Moosic, Pennsylvania was built by DuPont in 1908 for the production of black powder, which it was doing by 1912. When the Belin plant started producing it in sufficient amounts, the DuPont Company closed their other two plants at that time in Wapwallopen, Pennsylvania and Wilmington, Delaware. Belin was the only plant in the United States producing black powder by the 1960s. In 1972, DuPont sold it to Gearhart-Owen when it exited black powder manufacturing entirely.