Business Concentrates SUSTAINABILITY
FINANCE
Investor questions DowDuPont split Activist investor and large Dow Chemical shareholder Daniel S. Loeb thinks he has a better way to break DowDuPont into separate firms than what Dow and DuPont are planning. He estimates his plan would unlock $20 billion in shareholder value. Dow and DuPont expect to form DowDuPont in August. The company would then split up into three separate firms about 18 months later. As currently planned, a materials science firm will house plastics businesses from both companies, Dow petrochemical operations, Dow specialty chemicals such as coatings materials, and the former Dow Corning silicones business. A specialty products firm will inherit electronic materials from both firms as well as DuPont’s safety and protection, nutrition and health, and Loeb industrial biosciences units. A third firm will combine crop protection chemicals and seeds businesses. Loeb’s investment firm, Third Point, released a presentation on May 24 outlining an alternative way to break up the companies. The silicones business, Third Point says, belongs in the specialty products company, as do DuPont’s engineering plastics business and Dow’s consumer care and energy and water units. DuPont’s Tyvek polyolefin fabric business should go to materials science, although other safety and protection businesses, such as DuPont’s Kevlar fibers, should stay in the specialty products company. Dow and DuPont say their split-up plan isn’t set in stone. “The boards of Dow and DuPont have agreed to conduct a comprehensive review of the business composition of each division,” the firms say. “The two companies are fully aligned regarding the objective of the review, and we continually solicit and welcome input from our shareholders.”—ALEX TULLO
‘Dating site’ opens for hazard-free chemicals The Swedish environmental group ChemSec has introduced the Marketplace, a website linking companies selling alternatives to hazardous chemicals with those seeking to buy them. Chemical firms can advertise hazard-free products on the site for free. Buyers seeking such chemicals may post requests, also at no cost. The website acts only to introduce parties and does not facilitate transactions. Clothing retailer H&M has made the first product request: alternatives to the bisphenol A found in thermal paper for cash register and credit card receipts. Chemical companies including Chemours, Clariant, Rivertop Renewables, and Valspar have put products on the Marketplace. Chemours, for example, is offering Zelan R3, a nonfluorinated, 60% biobased coating for preventing stains on fabrics. “We are excited that ChemSec Marketplace can be a positive place for industry to find sustainable solutions,” says Bob Buck, technical fellow for Chemours. ChemSec has established requirements for chemicals that may be offered, including a maximum content of 1,000 ppm of any substance recognized by Europe’s Registration, Evaluation, Authorisation & Restriction of Chemicals law as being carcinogenic, mutagenic, reprotoxic, persistent, bioaccumulative, or toxic. ChemSec says it launched the website to raise the visibility of hazardous chemical substitutes. Other guides exist, “but very few of these show the way forward,” says Anne-Sofie Andersson, the group’s executive director. ChemSec is a nonprofit organization. The Marketplace initiative is being funded by the John Merck Fund, a U.S.-based charitable organization that aims to spend up to $100 million on human health and environment projects by 2020. Future versions of the Marketplace will include guides to chemical substitution and further information about safer alternatives.—ALEX SCOTT
PETROCHEMICALS
A four-state region in Appalachia could become a petrochemical supply and manufacturing hub on par with similar hubs on the U.S. Gulf Coast. That’s the thesis of a new report from the American Chemistry Council. The trade association envisions underground cavern storage facilities and an 800-km pipeline for ethane, propane, ethylene, and propylene “along an arc stretching from Monaca, Pa., to Catlettsburg, Ky., including a spur to serve the Charleston, W.Va., area.” Driven by a surfeit of natural gas liquids from the Marcellus, Utica, and Rogersville
12
C&EN | CEN.ACS.ORG | MAY 29, 2017
shale formations in the northeastern U.S., the $10 billion storage hub and pipeline could create 100,000 permanent jobs by 2025, the trade group says. Included in that tally are 25,000 chemical and plastic manufacturing jobs, 43,000 supplier jobs, and 32,000 additional jobs in communities where workers spend their earnings. The report envisions five big ethylene crackers built in the Ohio River Valley. Along with them will be projects for polyethylene, other derivatives, and propane dehydrogenation. All told, the report suggests, chemical makers could invest nearly $36 billion.
So far, though, the only definite project is Shell’s cracker and polyethylene plant in Monaca. PTT Global Chemical is considering a cracker in Mead Township, Ohio, but has yet to put steel in the ground. In 2015, Braskem put off a cracker and polyethylene project it was considering in West Virginia. U.S. Sens. Shelley Capito (R-W.Va.), Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), and Rob Portman (R-Ohio) are backing the concept of a petrochemical hub. The three introduced a bill on May 9 directing the government to conduct a feasibility study of an Appalachian ethane storage hub.—MARC REISCH
CREDIT: ANDREW KELLY/REUTERS/NEWSCOM
Chemical hub pitched for Appalachia
