Dow’s New Innovation Center to Drive Technology and Market Growth Synergies from Silicone Science Integration
July 31 2017 - 12:00PM
Business Wire
New $100 million center to innovate at the intersections of
silicone science and organic chemistry to bring new solutions to
market
Today, Andrew Liveris, chairman and chief executive officer of
The Dow Chemical Company (NYSE: DOW), announced that the Company
will begin construction of a new, $100 million Innovation Center
designed to drive innovation at the intersections of silicone
science and organic chemistry at the heritage Dow Corning corporate
campus.
The new facility will host approximately 200 research and
development employees who will explore future technologies at the
intersections of silicone chemistry and Dow’s unparalleled
knowledge of materials science and organic chemistry. Dow, which
started exploring silicone chemistry nearly 80 years ago upon
creating the Dow Corning joint venture, enhanced its ability to
combine these technologies after completing the ownership
restructuring of Dow Corning in June, 2016.
“This is a monumental day for Dow, our employees and for
Michigan as it marks another tremendous milestone in our company’s
more than 120 year history,” said Liveris. ”This world-class
facility could have been located anywhere and we chose to invest
right here in Michigan because both the U.S. and the state have a
growing and vibrant research, development and manufacturing sector
creating new opportunities every day.”
The new innovation center will be a key enabler in Dow achieving
its initial $100 million growth synergy target, as well as more
than $500 million of additional Dow-enabled bottom-line growth the
Company now expects to achieve across the enterprise from
integrating silicones into the Dow portfolio. This bottom-line
growth, coupled with Dow’s latest cost synergy target of more than
$650 million, greatly enhance silicones’ profitability. Dow now
expects EBITDA to increase to more than $2 billion by the end of
2019 – more than double its initial projection.
This added R&D power will complement the work of Dow’s more
than 1,200 researchers and developers already based in the Great
Lakes Bay Region, to focus on market opportunities such as
advancing technologies for home and personal care products,
enhancing and broadening Dow’s energy-saving building technologies,
advancing materials science for critical infrastructure and driving
closer partnerships with customers and value chain leaders.
Liveris first announced the project in December, 2016, at a
Grand Rapids, Mich. event with then U.S. President-elect Donald J.
Trump.
These investments further illustrate Dow’s long-term commitment
to investing and growing in Michigan’s Great Lakes Bay Region, as
the Company also celebrated today the grand opening of its new
global headquarters building in Midland - a state-of-the-art,
184,000 square-feet, six-story building that will host
approximately 470 employees and contractors.
During the last 10 years, Dow and its regional development
partners have driven more than $400 million of investment and
downtown economic redevelopment in the Great Lakes Bay Region, home
to the Company and nearly 13,000 of its employees and
contractors.
Dow has created more than 10,000 direct and indirect jobs in the
United States in the last four years alone. A significant portion
of that job creation is the result of the Company’s more than $6
billion of manufacturing investments currently underway on the U.S.
Gulf Coast, which employed 7,000 construction workers at the
construction peak and will result in 500 full-time Dow jobs. Dow
recently announced a next phase of strategic investments spread
over the next five years, extending Dow’s U.S. growth investments
to more than $12 billion over a 10-year period. These will support
job creation in the U.S., reaching approximately 3,500 construction
jobs and creating 200 full-time technical, vocational and
professional careers, further supporting nearly 2,000 jobs across
the broader economy(1).
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) The American Chemistry Council estimates that every job
created from the business of chemistry creates more than 6 jobs in
other sectors across the rest of the economy.
®TM Trademark of The Dow Chemical Company (“Dow”) or an
affiliated company of Dow
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The Dow Chemical CompanyRachelle
Schikorra+1.989.638.4090ryschikorra@dow.com
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