Dow Chemical (Midland, Michigan / USA; www.dow.com) will permanently shutter its PC plant in Freeport, Texas / USA in Q4. The facility will then immediately be decommissioned and demolished, the company told Plasteurope.com. The news follows a recent announcement by Dow spin-off Styron (Berwyn, Pennsylvania / USA; www.styron.com) – the sole recipient of material produced on the line – that it would cease production – see Plasteurope.com of 27.05.2014.

According to PIE's Polyglobe capacity database (www.polyglobe.net), the affected line has a nameplate capacity of 105,000 t/y, making it the smallest in North America – accounting for 12% of the continent’s total PC output. Market leaders Sabic Innovative Plastics and Bayer MaterialScience operate three additional PC plants in North America.

Styron plans to restructure its North American virgin PC supply, used to manufacture compounds and blends, and just announced that it intends to source the virgin PC for its plants in Freeport, Terneuzen / The Netherlands, Sao Paulo / Brazil and Hsinchu / Taiwan from a range of different sources in the future. Aside from arrangements with several unspecified producers, the company also wants to increasingly draw on materials from its own production lines, including its plant in Stade / Germany as well as from its Japan-based Sumika Styron Polycarbonate joint venture with Sumitomo (Tokyo / Japan; www.sumitomo-chem.co.jp).