There's the saying, "What doesn't kill you makes you stronger." For proof of that sentiment, one needs to look no further than to Shintech Louisiana LLC or Dow's Plaquemine, Louisiana, operations. Both have not only survived but thrived this past year, despite a global pandemic and catastrophic weather.
As the U.S. was passing the one-year anniversary of a nationwide lockdown due to COVID-19, Crystal King, plant manager for Dow Chemical in Plaquemine, said her plant continued to observe some restrictions for the time being, such as requiring permission to access the site.
"I'm hoping to relax some of those restrictions by the end of the year," King said.
Speaking on a panel as part of a webinar presented by the Louisiana Chemical Industry Alliance, King said that although the early months of 2020 were slow and "a bit rough," Dow bounced back with a very good second half of 2020, especially in the fourth quarter.
"For my site in particular, we're doing really well right now, and I think that's because of how we came out of the freeze," King said, commenting on the record-cold temperatures that paralyzed much of the Gulf Coast in February. "We were able to keep both of our crackers running and we kept a couple of other units on line, too."
According to King, the Plaquemine plant was the first Dow plant on the Gulf Coast to return to 100-percent operations.
"All of our units are running at 100 percent right now," King said. "And at some of our sites, especially the plastics sites, we are ahead of the competition."
King said she expects another good first quarter in 2021 for Dow because "we were able to be here while some of our competition could not."
King said she further expects a turnaround and other scheduled project work to be executed at the Plaquemine plant soon, which will run through the end of June as planned.
The plant conducted a couple of "fairly large turnarounds last year," King said. The largest one required the assistance of about a thousand additional workers.
"But we did not see any additional spread of COVID-19," King stated. "We came out of it pretty well. If we can do the same thing for this upcoming turnaround, we will be looking at moving to phase two for the site in terms of recovery."
The goal, King said, is to get to phase three of recovery by the end of 2021 and have the majority of employees back on the job. But King recognizes the working environment will be different.
"I'm not sure that we will bring everybody back to work on-site," King said. "Do HR or finance people really need to be on-site the way we had them on-site prior to COVID-19? If they want to, I wouldn't hold them back, but I also wouldn't make it a mandate that they have to show up every day."
Anticipating a new normal
Operations are also "pretty much back to normal" for Shintech in Louisiana, according to Danny Cedotal, vice president of manufacturing.
In the early months of COVID-19, the Shintech site "didn't have a lot of big, shared office spaces, but we did have some, so we relocated people out of those spaces. We didn't have people in close contact," Cedotal said.
Personnel at Shintech were able to return on-site and work a more normal schedule by the end of the summer last year.
"As our rules, policies and procedures 'caught up' to the COVID-19 situation, we became more confident we could prevent the spread as long as people on-site were following those rules and procedures," Cedotal said.
Cedotal anticipates the Shintech site will be back on course and busy for the remainder of 2021, and hopefully beyond, to pursue construction on its recently announced $1.3 billion expansion in Louisiana.
"We'll be happy when we get the new production facilities successfully back on line, or on line for the first time," Cedotal said. "But we won't have much of a breather because construction will be kicking off to drive pilings and prepare the new area where our facilities are going to be expanded, so there's not going to be much of a break."
