Capacity LedgerSix Things Arrive in Chattanooga, Twenty-Nine Leave
Chattem Chemicals filed two DEA applications on July 20 and the Federal Register published both on August 25. One asks to import six basic classes, including concentrate of poppy straw and the fentanyl precursor ANPP. The other asks to bulk manufacture twenty-nine, on the same site that calls itself the largest US source of sarcosinate surfactants.
Two DEA notices reached the Federal Register on August 25. Same company, same street address, same application date of July 20.
One is a list of what the firm wants to bring into the country. The other is a list of what it wants to make.
Read side by side, they are the closest thing the public record gives you to a plant tour.
The company is Chattem Chemicals, at 3801 Saint Elmo Avenue in Chattanooga, and something has been manufactured on that ground since 1879.
It is a Sun Pharma site now, and it sells four things: glycine, sodium sarcosinate surfactants, high-purity aluminum performance additives, and active pharmaceutical ingredients. The notices come out of that last line.
The Six That Arrive
The importer application asks for six basic classes: methamphetamine (1105), 4-anilino-N-phenethyl-4-piperidine (8333), phenylacetone (8501), cocaine (9041), poppy straw concentrate (9670), and tapentadol (9780). On the last one, the firm says plainly that it plans to import an intermediate of tapentadol in order to bulk manufacture tapentadol.
None of those six is a finished API. Every one of them is a starting point:
- Poppy straw concentrate is the natural opiate feedstock, and morphine, codeine, thebaine and oripavine all come out of it.
- ANPP is the piperidine the fentanyl family is built from.
- Phenylacetone is the amphetamine route.
- Cocaine appears on both applications, which is what a conversion step looks like in list form rather than a repackaging step.
The poppy straw line carries a constraint most feedstocks never see. Under 21 CFR 1312.13, narcotic raw material may be imported into the United States from seven countries only, and at least 80 percent of it has to originate in Turkey and India. No more than 20 percent may come from Spain, France, Poland, Hungary and Australia. The rule dates to 1981 and everyone in the trade still calls it the 80/20 rule.
So the origin mix on an American opiate API is fixed in the CFR before a sourcing manager opens a single conversation.
The Twenty-Nine That Leave
The bulk manufacturing application is the longer document: 29 basic classes, five of them Schedule I and twenty-four Schedule II. Opioids, the fentanyl family, the ADHD stimulant book, the coca chain.
Now, here is the thing worth the click.
Chattem's registration from October 2012 carried exactly 29 classes too. Fourteen years, identical headline count, and underneath it five classes came off and five went on (chart below).
Off the list: pentobarbital, meperidine, and the three opium classes, tincture, powdered and granulated. On it: cocaine, ecgonine, levorphanol, and marihuana and tetrahydrocannabinols, which the notice specifies would be manufactured synthetically.
The blocks carrying most of the book never moved. Eleven poppy-derived alkaloids and semi-synthetics in 2012, eleven in 2026.
Five stimulants then and five now. Four in the fentanyl class, both times.
What changed is the front of the chain. Opium as such went to zero and the import request asks for concentrate, which is where licensed global opiate supply has been heading for years: India is the only remaining exporter of raw opium, while Australia, France, Spain and Turkey ship concentrate of poppy straw.
What Else the Same Site Makes
Walk one building over and the register changes completely.
Chattem calls itself the largest source of sarcosinate surfactants in the United States, selling the Hamposyl range as three acids and five sodium salt solutions into personal care, cleaning, industrial and energy formulations. The line came to Chattanooga from Hampshire Chemical, a Dow subsidiary.
On glycine the company claims 50-plus years as the global manufacturing leader, with technical, electrochemical, Food Chemical Codex, USP, European Pharmacopoeia and a US Drug Master File pyrogen-free grade all on the sheet.
That combination is unusual and it is not an accident. Both books need the same underlying thing: documented control of a process, grade by grade, with an inspector on the other side of it. Chattem publishes a DEA inspection record with zero observations in 2010, 2013, 2015, 2017, 2022 and 2023, holds four separate DEA registrations covering manufacture, import, export and analytical work across schedules 1 through 5, and posts 19 years without a lost time accident.
Final Thoughts
There is no tonnage anywhere in this story. Chattem publishes no capacity figure, the DEA notices carry none, and this desk is not going to invent one.
What the notices do give you is scope, and for a site like this scope is the more useful number. A capacity table tells you how much of one molecule a plant can push. A class list tells you what a plant is allowed to touch at all, which for controlled substances is the gate that actually binds. The comment window on the manufacturing application runs to October 26, and on the import application to September 24, so both lists are still live documents.
Frankly, the most portable lesson here is procedural. DEA registration notices publish continuously, they are free, and they name the exact chemistry a US site is tooling up to run, often well before a product page or a DMF says anything.
If you buy controlled-substance APIs, that feed is sitting there.
Thanks for reading.