Hexion Inc.

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Intelligence

What's known

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• Did you know2023

  Hexion's chemical portfolio serves two infrastructure supply chains that are usually discussed in opposite policy contexts: (1) Conventional residential construction — PF resin is the critical binder that bonds wood strands in OSB and veneers in plywood; without Hexion PF resin (~38% US market share), most residential construction sheathing and structural panels cannot be manufactured; US housing represents conventional fossil-fuel-adjacent construction activity; (2) Wind energy infrastructure — Hexion epoxy resins are the matrix material for glass fiber-reinforced wind turbine blades; wind blade composites require high-quality epoxy with good UV resistance and controlled cure properties; wind energy is a primary US renewable electricity source. The same Columbus, Ohio chemical company provides the binder for building the homes that consume electricity AND the matrix material for building the turbines that generate renewable electricity. Hexion/Allnex chemistries connect housing construction (fossil-fuel-heated/cooled) and wind power generation (replacing fossil fuels for electricity) — simultaneously serving the building and clean energy sectors from the same epoxy/resin chemistry base.

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• Concentration2023

  Hexion Inc.'s origins trace through a remarkable chain of chemical industry ownership: Borden Chemical (the same Borden that made Elsie the Cow dairy products — Borden Inc. divested its chemical operations in the 1990s) → Resolution Performance Products (private equity) → Hexion Specialty Chemicals (Apollo Global Management). Apollo acquired Hexion through multiple leveraged buyouts between 2000 and 2015, loading it with approximately $3.5 billion in debt. Hexion filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in April 2019 — not from operational failure but from an excessive debt burden that the resin business (a commodity chemical market) could not service. After emerging from bankruptcy in July 2019, Hexion became Apollo's private property. The dominant North American supplier of the adhesive that holds OSB wall panels together went through private equity ownership, $3.5B in debt, and Chapter 11 bankruptcy — yet remained the critical OSB resin supplier throughout, because the North American OSB industry had no adequate alternative. Hexion's OSB resin customers (West Fraser, LP Building Solutions, Norbord) could not easily switch suppliers even during Hexion's bankruptcy proceedings.

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• Origin2023

  Hexion's forest products resin business traces to Borden Chemical — a division of Borden, Inc., the iconic American dairy company known for Elsie the Cow and condensed milk. In addition to dairy, Borden had a chemicals division (Borden Chemical) that made adhesive resins, including phenol-formaldehyde (PF) resins for plywood and OSB. The connection between dairy and adhesive chemistry is not arbitrary: formaldehyde-based resins were developed from urea and phenol chemistry that grew alongside the synthetic polymer era; Borden's scale in food processing chemistry gave it early capacity to process formaldehyde-based resins. Borden Chemical eventually became Momentive Specialty Chemicals, then merged into Hexion Inc. (Columbus, Ohio). Hexion was subsequently acquired by Allnex (~2023-2024). The result: the adhesive resin inside the structural plywood and OSB of American homes traces its corporate lineage through the dairy company that made Elsie the Cow famous.

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