DowDuPont Materials Science, the business division of DowDuPont plans to startup of its new integrated world-scale ethylene production facility and its new ELITEâ„¢ enhanced polyethylene production facility, both in Freeport, Texas. Both units will continue to ramp up through the third quarter and are expected to reach full rates in the fourth quarter of 2017.

These facilities are an integral part of Dow’s investments on the U.S. Gulf Coast to meet increasing consumer-led demand in their core market verticals of packaging, infrastructure and consumer care, and will enable their next level of earnings and cash flow growth.

These two key milestones enable Dow to capture benefits from increasing supplies of U.S. shale gas to deliver differentiated downstream solutions in its core market verticals.

Andrew Liveris, executive chairman of DowDuPont, and chairman and CEO of Dow said that this is a monumental moment for Dow as they advance their global growth strategy by fully deploying their unmatched molecular and physical integration.

A central component of Dow’s U.S. Gulf Coast investments, the ethylene production facility has an initial nameplate capacity of 1.5 million metric tons. As part of Dow’s next wave of growth investments, the unit will be expanded to 2 million metric tons, making it the world’s largest ethylene facility.

Measured by total investment per metric ton of capacity, this new ethylene unit represents the least capital-intensive ethylene investment in the region.

The 400,000 metric ton ELITE polyethylene production unit is the first of four new derivative units at Dow’s manufacturing sites in Texas and Louisiana. Dow’s ELITE enhanced polyethylene resins are known for their versatility and high performance attributes and are used in multiple types of flexible food and industrial packaging applications.

Jim Fitterling, chief operating officer for DowDuPont Materials Science said that as they ramp these units to full production, they continue to solidify their early-mover advantage while significantly increasing their integration and growing their U.S. production capacity.

Dow’s new ethylene facility provides a solid, capital-efficient base in this attractive, feedstock-advantaged region, which will continue to fuel the industry’s broadest and most differentiated derivatives slate.

In addition to supporting Dow’s near-term capacity additions, the ethylene facility will also support further planned debottlenecks to unlock additional polyethylene capacity as well as a new world-scale polyethylene unit as part of the Company’s comprehensive growth investments