Dow Chemical Haverhill closing

The Dow Chemical Plant at Haverhill is closing, which will mean the loss of some 30 jobs.

On Thursday the Daily Times heard rumors that the employees had been informed the plant was closing, and inquired of the corporate office as to whether or not it was true and received the following response.

“On August 3, 2016 Dow Building Solutions (DBS), a business unit within The Dow Chemical Company, announced its decision to close an extruded polystyrene (XPS) manufacturing facility in Hanging Rock, Ohio,” a Dow Chemical spokeswoman said. “Production will stop at the end of third quarter 2016 and decommissioning of the plant is anticipated to be complete by the end of 2016.”

The spokeswoman said the decision to close the facility aligns with Dow Building Solutions’ growth strategy, inclusive of repositioning its asset grid, and is a step-change approach to better serve customer demand, and adjust to macro demographic shifts.

“Dow is committed to the DBS growth strategy, sees North America as a structurally attractive market, and is taking action to enable sustainable growth,” the spokeswoman said. “DBS maintains a strong asset base in North America and does not anticipate any impact to customers.”

The Daily Times asked Southern Ohio Port Authority Director Jason Kester how many people were employed at the plant, he said there are 30 employees and his understanding is that 21 people will be let go as the first phase of the closing, while the remaining 9 people will stay for purposes of physically shutting down the plant as the second phase.

According to released information Dow announced in June the successful completion of the transaction to restructure the ownership of Dow Corning. Dow is now 100 percent owner of Dow Corning’s silicones business, which had 2015 revenues of greater than $4.5 billion and is expected to generate more than $1 billion of annual EBITDA for Dow at full run-rate synergies. According to a Dow news release the transaction represents a post-synergy multiple of less than 6x EBITDA, highlighting the unique value creation to Dow shareholders from acquiring 50 percent of the silicones business while benefiting from 100 percent of the synergies.