In its ongoing drive to improve the competitiveness across every business and in every geographic region, The Dow Chemical Company plans to shut down several assets around the world. Upon full implementation, the shut downs will reduce structural costs by approximately US$160 million a year.
The most significant shutdowns will take place at Dow's facilities in Sarnia and Fort Saskatchewan, Canada, and the Porto Marghera plant in Italy.
In Sarnia, all production activity will cease by the end of 2008 as follows:
· The low density polyethylene (LDPE) plant will be shut down over the coming weeks
· Polystyrene (PS) production will cease before the end of this year
· Latex production from the UES facility will shut down by year-end 2008
· The polyols plant will also shut down by year-end 2008.
In Fort Saskatchewan, the Company will shut down its chlor-alkali and direct chlorination ethylene dichloride plants by the end of October 2006 due to the capital costs required to maintain long-term operations at the 27 year-old facilities. In Porto Marghera, Italy, Dow will not restart production of the toluene diisocyanate (TDI) facility, which was shut down for planned maintenance in early August, due to weak fundamentals globally.
04-Sep-06 
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