The Dow Corning name has been around since the 1940s, and over the years, it has undergone several changes. Most recently, Dow Corning was acquired by Dupont and then merged with Dow Chemical. This has caused a lot of confusion among customers and suppliers alike as they try to figure out how these companies are related and which products fall under which brand names. In this blog post, we will look at the history of Dow Corning's name changes and try to make some sense of it all!
The Dow Chemical Company (NYSE: DOW) announced the successful completion of the transaction to restructure the ownership of Dow Corning on June 1st, 2016. Dow was then 100 percent owner of Dow Corning's silicones business, which had 2015 revenues of more than $4.5 billion and is expected to generate more than $1 billion in annual EBITA.
As Dow integrated the Dow Corning line of products, they implemented a phased approach to ERP/SAP, website changes, branding, and documentation updates. We saw the separation of product lines previously known as only "Dow Corning to DOWSIL™, MOLYKOTE™, XIAMETER™, and SILASTIC™, etc.
2017 Dow Corning Branding Communication
DowDuPont™ (NYSE: DWDP) announced the successful completion of the merger of equals between The Dow Chemical Company and E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Company, which was announced on September 01, 2017, and approved on August 31, 2017. With three divisions – Agriculture, Materials Science, and Specialty Products – the combined entity is known as "DowDuPont™."
This rebranding is no surprise to those who have followed the companies' histories. In 1999, Dow Chemical acquired Union Carbide, and in 2015 it merged with Dow Corning. DuPont has also undergone several changes, including a merger with ConocoPhillips in 2017.
After the merger, DowDuPont™ became the largest chemical conglomerate in the world. It brought in $86 billion in revenue, more than any other firm on earth. That's more than BASF in Germany (about $74 billion in sales), privately held Sabic in Saudi Arabia (about $33 billion in chemical sales), and Formosa Plastics Group of Taiwan (also about $33 billion).
The concern is that the conglomerate's structure might create internal divisions, damaging the company and resulting in misaligned goals. Although there is an advantage of consolidating businesses in cash flow: one entity's cash flow can be used to finance R&D or capital investment in another unit. Others feel that consolidated structures are difficult to manage, and the decision to split DowDuPont™ came in late 2018 to early 2019.
The dissolution of DowDuPont was completed on June 1, 2019, splitting the company into three different segments; Dow, Dupont, and Corteva.
