SOUTH CHARLESTON, W.Va. — The merger of two longtime chemical giants appears to be rapidly taking shape. Shareholders of Dow Chemical and DuPont this week approved the idea of combining the two in a massive and historic merger. Both companies have operations in West Virginia which has naturally raised questions about where such a marriage would leave operations in the Mountain State.
“I honestly don’t know, but I’m not real nervous about it,” said Kevin DeGregorio, Executive Director of the West Virginia Chemical Alliance. “Not as much as we were when Dow merged with Union Carbide and you saw a lot of the research and development leave.”
The merger faces a number of additional regulatory hurdles, but reports indicate they’d like to have the process finalized by the end of the year. Both companies have reduced their footprint in West Virginia with company splits in recent years. DuPont split off part of its operations into Chemours at the Belle plant in Kanawha County and part of its operation at Washington in Wood County. Dow, after taking over Union Carbide, significantly reduced operations at the main site in South Charleston, but has also taken over part of Bayer Crop Science operations at Institute in recent years.
“Their plan is actually once they come together in a few years they want to split off into three separate companies,” DiGregorio said. “One will be agriculture products, one specialty chemicals, and one materials.”
Everything remains up in the air as negotiations happen at the highest level of the global corporations. Nobody is hazarding a guess about how it impacts West Virginia where most of the operations are in manufacturing. DiGregorio said while it could have an impact, his guess is it will be minimal here.
“I think West Virginia is positioned pretty well in terms of this merger,” he said. “Cuts have already been announced by both companies, but I think most of those will be in research and development, administration, financial departments and those kinds of things. I don’t think manufacturing facilities, which is what we have in this state, will be as affected.”