Dow Completes Construction of World-Scale Ethylene Production Facility in Freeport, Texas
March 28 2017 - 12:53PM
Business Wire
- Commissioning and Startup Activities
Well Underway
- Facility Remains On-track for Mid-year
Startup
- Will Fuel Industry’s Broadest and Most
Differentiated Derivatives Slate
The Dow Chemical Company (NYSE: DOW) today announced the
completion of the construction phase of its new, world-scale
ethylene production facility in Freeport, Texas. The Company
reached this milestone within one week of the originally planned
date, which was set approximately two years ago. Dow’s ethylene
unit is now progressing through the commissioning phase, with
start-up expected by mid-year.
“This tremendous milestone represents the Dow team’s unwavering
ability to deliver on our commitments to meet the needs of our
customers, generate value for our shareholders and to create
opportunities for our employees,” said Andrew Liveris, Dow’s
chairman and CEO. “The Freeport ethylene unit is the cornerstone of
our $6 billion investment in the U.S. Gulf Coast. Our growth
investments leverage the advantaged shale gas supply available in
the U.S., and represent thousands of new jobs and significant
economic value, including exports of approximately 20 percent of
our U.S. production.”
At peak activity, the construction phase involved more than
3,000 Dow employees and contractors. The project achieved more than
five million consecutive work hours without a lost-time incident.
Dow’s new unit also represents one of the least capital-intensive
ethylene investments1 currently announced across the U.S. Gulf
Coast.
“I’m incredibly proud of our team’s efforts to complete the
complex construction phase of Dow’s new state-of-the-art ethylene
facility. This unit will further enhance Dow’s industry-leading
integration and provide the critical building blocks to bolster our
competitive advantage in targeted consumer-led markets, including
packaging, transportation, infrastructure and consumer care,” said
Jim Fitterling, Dow’s president and chief operating officer. “Not
only does this investment leverage Dow’s early-mover advantage in
shale gas, but it will also fuel the industry’s broadest and most
differentiated derivatives slate, featuring Dow’s proprietary
catalyst and process technologies, to meet growing consumer demand
throughout the Americas.”
The world-scale production unit – with a nameplate capacity of
1.5 million metric tons – is a central component of Dow’s $6
billion U.S. Gulf Coast investment program, designed to strengthen
the competitiveness of its downstream, consumer-led businesses. It
will feed Dow’s derivative investments, which will come on-line
throughout 2017 and 2018 and include:
- ELITE™ Enhanced
Polyethylene for high performance flexible food packaging
and personal hygiene applications (Capacity: 400 KTA);
- New specialty low density
polyethylene for industrial and supply chain packaging
applications (Capacity: 350 KTA);
- Next Generation NORDEL™ metallocene
EPDM to deliver solutions for higher-margin applications for
the transportation, infrastructure and consumer durables
end-markets (Capacity: 200 KTA);
- High Melt Index Specialty and
Conventional Polyolefin Elastomers for high-performance
flexible packaging, transportation and consumer markets (Capacity:
320 KTA); and
- Bi-modal gas phase de-bottleneck
to enable more offerings for high-performance pipe and fitting
applications, as well as the cap and closure market (125 KTA).
“The addition of Dow’s TX-9 cracker to our
Freeport site is a great milestone. That site now
has over 4 million metric tons of olefins capacity to
provide low-cost integration strength to our targeted
high-growth derivatives,” said Doug May, business president
for Hydrocarbons. “This is an important proof point of
the Dow team’s ability to deliver the projected cost
and schedule performance on a project of this size and sets
the tone for how we can execute the commissioning and
start-up of the ethylene unit over the
next few months.”
About Dow
Dow (NYSE: DOW) combines the power of science and technology to
passionately innovate what is essential to human progress. The
Company is driving innovations that extract value from material,
polymer, chemical and biological science to help address many of
the world's most challenging problems, such as the need for fresh
food, safer and more sustainable transportation, clean water,
energy efficiency, more durable infrastructure, and increasing
agricultural productivity. Dow's integrated, market-driven
portfolio delivers a broad range of technology-based products and
solutions to customers in 175 countries and in high-growth sectors
such as packaging, infrastructure, transportation, consumer care,
electronics, and agriculture. In 2016, Dow had annual sales of $48
billion and employed approximately 56,000 people worldwide. The
Company's more than 7,000 product families are manufactured at 189
sites in 34 countries across the globe. References to "Dow" or the
"Company" mean The Dow Chemical Company and its consolidated
subsidiaries unless otherwise expressly noted. More information
about Dow can be found at www.dow.com.
1. Measured as the capital investment per
metric ton of capacity.
®TM Trademark of The Dow Chemical Company (“Dow”) or an
affiliated company of Dow
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The Dow Chemical CompanyJarrod ErpeldingCorporate Media
Relations989.633.1863jarrod.erpelding@dow.com
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