Millennium Inorganic Chemicals is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Cristal. "TASNEE," a Saudi major diversified company with chemicals and petrochemicals operations, owns 66 percent of Cristal, while 33 percent of Cristal is owned by Gulf Investment Corporation ("GIC"), an investment house established in Kuwait by the GCC countries.The Thann Plant is one of seven manufacturing sites that produce titanium dioxide for Cristal, the world’s second largest producer of titanium dioxide. TiO2 is a white pigment used to provide whiteness, brightness, opacity and durability to paint and coatings, plastics, paper and elastomers. Thann is in the Thur Valley in Alsace, France, near the border with Germany and Switzerland. The Thann Plant is located on a 15-hectare chemical complex. The Ochsenfeld site, the effluent treatment plant base is on an 80-hectare landfill, located 3 kilometers from Thann. In 1922, the Thann plant became the first in the world to produce TiO₂. The plant produces TiO₂ through a sulfate-based process, a wet chemical process that uses sulfuric acid to extract and purify TiO₂ in anatase crystal form. The raw pigment is then finished into a product with specific performance characteristics for particular end-use applications, essentially in the paper, paint, plastic and rubber markets. Specialty and high-performance TiO₂ products produced at Thann include titanium tetrachloride that is used in the manufacture of TiO₂, in the automotive industry (pearlescent pigments for automotive paints) and also as a catalyst in the chemical industry. Another product, ultrafine TiO₂, is primarily used to improve our environment (air and water pollution control) and in the design of self-cleaning surfaces (photocatalysis).