Dow Chemical Sheds More Assets, Sells Texas Plant to Arkema

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Researched by Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, Texas)--The Dow Chemical Company (NYSE:DOW) (Midland, Michigan) has announced plans to sell the acrylic acid and esters plant located in Clear Lake, Texas to Arkema (Paris, France) for an estimated $50 million. Dow is selling these assets to Arkema in compliance with divestitures that Dow agreed to in order to secure the FTC's approval to acquire Rohm and Haas. Dow took action to move forward with the sale well ahead of the November 27 deadline.

Dow still owns and operates a former Rohm & Haas performance polymers plant producing acrylic acid and related esters in Deer Park, Texas. It's unclear if this plant is being considered as part of a plan to divest additional acrylic businesses. Based on active projects identified as part of Industrial Info's North American Project Database future project spending at this site had been limited greatly this year with no major capital projects being considered. There were although several potentially large maintenance turnarounds planned for the site early next year including work in the methyl methacrylate (MMA) unit, sulfuric acid unit (HR) and acrylates units (HT Area). Zachry Industrial Inc (San Antonio, Texas) is the resident contractor for this site supporting both maintenance and capital project needs for the plant site.

In one of the largest divestures so far since the acquisition of Rohm & Haas, K+S AG (Kassel, Germany) agreed in April to purchase the former Morton Salt business of Rohm & Haas from Dow, valued at an estimated $1.6 billion, which included more then a dozen plant sites across the U.S. These two transactions alone bring Dow much closer to the $4.3 billion they indicated could be raised through divestments of non-core businesses.

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