Producer
Dow Inc. (Packaging & Specialty Plastics)
One of the world's largest polyethylene producers; pioneered LLDPE (DOWLEX™) and metallocene PE (ELITE™, AFFINITY™); Packaging & Specialty Plastics segment is Dow's largest by revenue (~$23B of ~$45B total); major supplier of PE resins to Berry Global, Reynolds, and other bag converters.
3
Inputs supplied
1
Goods downstream
2
Facilities
0
Stories
What they make
3 inputs Dow Inc. (Packaging & Specialty Plastics) supplies
Click an input to see every good that depends on it, every country that produces it, and every other company in the supply chain.
Where it shows up
Goods downstream
Essential goods that depend on something Dow Inc. (Packaging & Specialty Plastics) makes, pick one to see the full supply chain.
Where they make it
2 facilities
Dow -- Freeport, Texas (Ethylene Cracker Complex) →
USFreeport, Brazoria County, Texas, USA · chemical_plant
Dow primary US ethylene production at Freeport, Texas; multiple ethane steam crackers. Freeport is Dow's largest integrated chemical site globally. Ethylene produced here feeds downstream polyethylene, polyols, epoxy, and other Dow products. Freeport was severely impacted by Winter Storm Uri (Feb 2021) and Hurricane Harvey (Aug 2017).
Dow -- Freeport, Texas (LLDPE / Polyethylene Complex) →
USFreeport, Brazoria County, Texas, USA · chemical_plant
Dow's largest US polyethylene (LLDPE and HDPE) production complex at Freeport Texas; one of the largest integrated chemical complexes in the world. Connected to ethylene crackers using US Gulf Coast ethane from shale gas processing. Produces DOWLEX LLDPE, Elite mLLDPE, and other Dow polyethylene grades. Freeport is one of two primary Dow LLDPE sites (along with Plaquemine, Louisiana).
What else they do
Business segments
The company's full revenue map, where this supply-chain role fits within their broader business.
Packaging & Specialty Plastics
52%Industrial Intermediates & Infrastructure
28%Performance Materials & Coatings
20%
Intelligence
What's known
Sourced claims about this company's role in supply chains, chokepoints, concentration, incidents, dual-use connections.
Origin2023
Herbert Henry Dow founded Dow Chemical in Midland, Michigan in 1897 to extract bromine from the brine deposits under Michigan using his patented electrolytic cell process. His company immediately collided with the German Bromkonvention cartel, which had fixed global bromine prices at 49 cents/pound. When Dow began selling at 36 cents and threatened to export to Europe, the cartel flooded the US market with cheap German bromine to drive him under. Dow's response was to secretly buy up the cheap German bromine in Europe, relabel it, and resell it in Germany at lower prices than the cartel charged -- breaking the cartel's domestic price-fixing by using its own predatory pricing against it. This 1904 competitive battle is still cited in antitrust and industrial strategy courses. The company built from that bromine extraction business is now one of the world's largest polyethylene producers, supplying plastic film to virtually every consumer products company.
Dow Inc. ↗Did you know2023
Dow's AFFINITY and ENGAGE metallocene polyolefin elastomers serve as the encapsulant film in photovoltaic (solar panel) modules, sandwiching silicon cells between glass and the backing sheet. The same Freeport Texas or Tarragona Spain Dow plant that makes PE resin for Hefty trash bags (through Berry Global) also ships EVA and polyolefin films to solar panel manufacturers at Longi Solar and First Solar. When solar panel demand surged in 2021-2023, Dow encapsulant film capacity tightened, with solar module manufacturers competing against food packaging converters for allocation from the same Dow polyolefin lines. The PE resin that keeps your groceries sealed and the polymer that converts sunlight into electricity in a Texas solar farm share production infrastructure at Dow's Gulf Coast cracker complex.
Dow Inc. ↗