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Environment

Dow in China

New R&D center will employ 600 people by 2007

by Jean-François Tremblay
January 31, 2005 | A version of this story appeared in Volume 83, Issue 5

UP-AND-COMING
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Credit: PHOTO BY JEAN-FRANÇOIS TREMBLAY
Shanghai is emerging as the Chinese R&D hub for chemical and pharmaceutical companies.
Credit: PHOTO BY JEAN-FRANÇOIS TREMBLAY
Shanghai is emerging as the Chinese R&D hub for chemical and pharmaceutical companies.

BUSINESS IN ASIA

Dow says it will build an R&D and information technology (IT) center in China, although the location has not been decided. The facility is expected to employ 600 people by 2007.

Within a year, the new center will employ about 200 IT professionals, Dow officials say. R&D work will follow; the focus, however, is unclear. Kay Yau, Dow's head of media relations in Asia, says the R&D center will support Dow's "customer application development needs in Asia." The chemical giant, headquartered in the U.S., employs 5,000 people in an R&D capacity worldwide, she says.

Dow operates several manufacturing sites in China that make polystyrene, polyol, and epoxy resins, among other products. It employs 1,600 people there, out of a total 46,000 employees worldwide. Sales in China amount to $1.6 billion, making it Dow's third largest market after the U.S. and Germany.

But Dow has yet to implement a major investment project in China. The company has quietly given up on a plan, announced in the mid-1990s, to build a world-scale petrochemical complex in northeast China. Last December, the company announced that it was studying the feasibility of a coal-to-olefins project with Shenhua Group (C&EN, Jan. 3, page 12).

Several multinational firms are setting up R&D facilities in China, mostly in Shanghai. Rohm and Haas announced plans to open an R&D center there this year with an eventual staff of 225 people.

Other companies that are planning or already operating R&D centers in Shanghai include General Electric, Honeywell, Degussa, Hitachi Chemical, Toray Industries, and Unilever (C&EN, March 24, 2003, page 13).

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