Dow Outlines Strategy for Polyurethanes Business
MIDLAND, MI – The Dow Chemical Co. (Dow) has made significant strategic moves over the past six months, strengthening its long-term commitment and investments in its Polyurethane business while enhancing the competitiveness of its already strong asset foundation.
These strategic moves are ultimately designed to catapult the franchise in a continued growth trajectory within the next three to five years. Leading this next phase, Dow has appointed a proven business leader with a technology-rich background and experience running integrated businesses. With a new world-scale manufacturing complex in Saudi Arabia planned to come online in 2016 and a new Global Vice President, Dow Polyurethanes, a business unit of Dow, is investing in the assets and expertise that will position its customers for growth.
Mark Bassett, Ph.D., was recently named Global Vice President for Dow Polyurethanes. As Global Vice President, Bassett will be responsible for business strategy, profit and loss, as well as innovation and growth. Prior to this role, Bassett was the Global Vice President for Dow Oxygenated Solvents. He began his career with Dow in 1989 when he joined Union Carbide Corp., a wholly owned subsidiary of The Dow Chemical Co., in the Reaction Engineering Skill Center.
Announced in July 2011, the joint venture between Dow and the Saudi Arabian Oil Co. (Saudi Aramco), known as Sadara Chemical Co., will be the largest integrated chemical complex site ever built in the world at one time with over three million metric tons of capacity. The site will bring Dow’s technology-differentiated polyurethane solutions to customers in emerging geographies such as China, the Middle East, Eastern Europe and Africa.
Sadara is just one of the more recent examples of the company’s strategic growth footprint, where Dow has plans to offer a broad portfolio of propylene glycol (PG), polyether polyol and isocyanate products by 2016. Other continued investments in propylene oxide, PG and polyurethanes have resulted in successfully co-operating a hydrogen peroxide to propylene oxide (HPPO) plant in Antwerp, Belgium, since 2009, a new HPPO plant in Thailand in 2011 and plans for a new PG plant in Thailand to start up in the next 12 months. These investments continue to build on Dow’s already strong polyurethane asset base.
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