(Midland, Michigan) /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- The Dow Chemical Company (NYSE:DOW) says it will shutdown of a number of manufacturing plants, including ethylene and ethylene-derivative facilities, as part of its latest restructuring effort.
Consistent with the company's $1.3 billion streamlining related to the acquisition of Rohm and Haas Company, the plan includes eliminating about 2,500 positions, which had been previously announced. The latest cuts will save more than $100 million annually.
"Consistent with Dow's practice of active portfolio management, we continue to take quick and aggressive action to right-size our manufacturing footprint, particularly in our basics portfolio," said Andrew N. Liveris, Dow chairman and chief executive officer.
Specific sites in the company's basics portfolio that will be impacted include:
*An ethylene cracker in Hahnville, Louisiana
*An ethylene oxide/ethylene glycol production unit in Hahnville, Louisiana
*An ethylene dichloride and vinyl chloride monomer facility in Plaquemine, Louisiana
These shutdowns are in addition to numerous other ethylene-derivative closures that have occurred as part of a restructuring program announced in the fourth quarter of 2008. When combined, they will reduce the company's ethylene demand by approximately 30 percent on the U.S. Gulf Coast. As a result, Dow expects to eliminate its purchases of ethylene from the merchant market (approximately three billion pounds annually), improving the company's cost position while fully integrating ethylene production with internal demand in order to better meet customer needs.
Dow is a diversified chemical company with sales of $58 billion in 2008 and 46,000 employees worldwide. On April 1, 2009, Dow acquired Rohm and Haas Company, a global specialty materials company with sales of $10 billion in 2008 and 15,000 employees worldwide.
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