USA Dow Chemical Company formed a new business unit focused on the coatings market: Dow Coating Materials. The unit combines the resources and technologies of Dow Coating Solutions and Rohm and Haas Paint and Coating Materials and will be responsible for providing raw materials for industrial and architectural coatings.Similarly, the chemist reported two agreements that could help it reduce the $16.3 billion debt it assumed in 2008 to buy Rohm & Haas: the first contemplates the sale of 45% of a Dutch refinery to the U.S. oil company Valero for US$725 million, and the second is the sale of its antifreeze salt operations to Occidental Petroleum. for US$210 million.
Finally, the decision to close the Leioa factory (Spain) was definitively closed, effective in the third quarter of the year, due to "the current market situation" and the "negative results" of the feasibility studies related to this plant.
