Dow Announces Start-Up of its NEW Ethylene Production Facility and ELITE™ Polyethylene Unit in Texas
- Startup of 1.5 Million Tons world-scale ethylene facility
- Serves as cornerstone for industry’s most integrated and differentiated derivatives slate ELITE™
- Polyethylene unit features proprietary Solution Process technology
DowDuPont Materials Science, the business division of DowDuPont to be named Dow, announced the startup of its new integrated world-scale ethylene production facility and its new ELITE™ enhanced polyethylene production facility, both in Freeport, Texas. These two key milestones enable Dow to capture benefits from increasing supplies of U.S. shale gas to deliver differentiated downstream solutions in its core market verticals.
Both units will continue to ramp up through the third quarter and are expected to reach full rates in the fourth quarter of 2017.
“This is a monumental moment for Dow as we advance our global growth strategy by fully deploying our unmatched molecular and physical integration,” said Andrew Liveris, executive chairman of DowDuPont, and chairman and CEO of Dow. “These facilities are an integral part of Dow’s investments on the U.S. Gulf Coast to meet increasing consumer-led demand in our core market verticals of packaging, infrastructure and consumer care, and will enable our next level of earnings and cash flow growth.”
A central component of Dow’s U.S. Gulf Coast investments, the ethylene production facility has an initial nameplate capacity of 1.5 million metric tons. As part of Dow’s next wave of growth investments, the unit will be expanded to 2 million metric tons, making it the world’s largest ethylene facility. Measured by total investment per metric ton of capacity, this new ethylene unit represents the least capital-intensive ethylene investment in the region.
For more information please visit www.dow.com.
