During the first thirty years VGF cooperated closely with the British manufacturer Courtaulds and other companies to share technology and maintain prices by avoiding competition.

It merged with the Dutch firm Enka in 1929 under the holding company Algemene Kunstzijde Unie (AKU), but the two retained their legal identities.

In 1857 the Swiss chemist Matthias Eduard Schweizer (1818–60) found that cotton could be dissolved in a solution of copper salts and ammonia and then regenerated.

In 1890 the French chemist Louis Henri Despeissis invented the cuprammonium process for spinning fibers from cotton dissolved in Schweizer's reagent.

[3] Max Fremery (1859–1932), a German chemist, and Johann Urban (1863–1940), an Austrian engineer, were manufacturing lamp filaments in Oberbruch near Aachen in 1891 using cotton and Schweizer's reagent.

[3] Fremery and Urban decided to start making artificial silk (Glanzstoff), and patented a version of the Despeissis process with the addition of a practical method for spinning the fiber.

[6] Although VGF's product was less versatile than rayon produced by the viscose process the scale of the operation allowed for reduced prices.

[8] In July 1911 the chairman of VGF, Hans Jordan, decided to pay 2 million marks for all the German patent rights for the viscose process and for the Donnersmarcks Kunstseide und Acetatwerke near Stettin.

[6] The company headed by Count Guido Henckel von Donnersmarck (1830–1916) had been the first in Germany to use the viscose process invented by Courtaulds in Britain.

[7] Bemberg was using the "stretch-spinning" process invented by the chemist Edmund Thiele (1867–1927) to make cuprammonium rayon with equally fine filaments to the artificial silk of Hilaire de Chardonnet (1839–1924),and with better physical properties.

[9] For some time VGF, Courtaulds and the French Comptoir des Textiles Artificiels dominated the rayon market.

[13] The companies planned to form a consortium that would to coordinate sales, set prices and production volumes, and share profits in each region, but were unable to agree on a formal contract before the outbreak of World War I (1914–18).

[14] The German government, faced with a cotton shortage due to the Allied blockade, ordered 3,000 tons of viscose staple from VGF, which was used for a variety of military textiles including clothing.

[24] A German director of VGF, Karl Scherer, replaced the company founder Riccardo Gualino (1879–1964) as head of the firm and cut output drastically.

[29] The city of Elizabethton provided tax concessions and favorable rates for the large amounts of water used in rayon production.

[24] After the merger AKU continued to operate in Britain despite strong protests from Courtaulds and lengthy negotiations to try to resolve the issue.

[37] A bitter internal management dispute blew up in 1933 when two VGF executives, Carl Benrath and Willi Springorum, were accused of rigging the books.

Benrath in turn attacked the Deutsche Bank executive and AKU supervisory board member Oscar Schlitter.

[37] Benrath wrote to another Deutsche Bank executive, Emil Georg von Stauss (1877–1942), "We live in a New Germany in which – thank the Lord – the honor of the individual is protected by a strong hand.

The regime wanted to reduce reliance on imported fiber by increasing domestic manufacturing, and one Nazi Party expert on textiles proposed that AKU should be taken over by I.G.

The company made rayon and also a tyre-corduroy using synthetic thread that the Ministry of German Basic and Raw Materials ordered on a large scale.

[30] The American rayon industry benefited from protective tariffs and the fashionable short skirts, which created demand for smooth, sheer stockings.

[35] In May 1939 Göring, who had come to believe that Strauss had been bribed to support an anti-German position, forced all the German members of the AKU Delegates Committee to resign.

They were replaced by four new members including Hermann Josef Abs (1901–94) of the Deutsche Bank and Baron Kurt von Schröder (1889–1966) of Bankhaus Stein, Cologne.

[46] In 1947 AKU ceded all the US property of VGF to the OAP, including physical assets, working capital, patents and trademarks.

"[34] In 1950 VGF was the largest German manufacturer of artificial fibers, with a management team strongly oriented towards the United States.

[52] Carl Wurster (1900–74) of BASF entered into discussions on close cooperation in manufacturing fiber with Ernst Hellmut Vits and Hermann Josef Abs.

BASF wanted to purchase a 25% share of VGF, obtain exclusive supply contracts and undertake joint research into raw materials and synthetic fibers.

[51] Akzo sold its US fiber business to BASF in 1985 to obtain funds for purchase of various small companies, mostly American, making chemicals, coatings and pharmaceuticals.

Akzo merged with the Swedish Nobel Group in 1996 to form what is now AkzoNobel in a complex process in which parts of the companies were divested or shut down, and a major reorganization was implemented.