PHILADELPHIA, US: Chemtura Corporation announced a restructuring plan to reduce manufacturing conversion costs by approximately $50 million, or about 10 per cent annually, eliminate approximately $15 million of annual stranded costs arising from the previously announced sale of the Chemtura AgroSolutions business, and reduce selling, general and administrative costs (SG&A) by at least $12 million annually.
Despite the success of many of Chemtura’s improvement initiatives, the Company faces continuing weak demand conditions in some of the market applications it serves, as well as excess capacity in bromine and certain organometallics. While the
Company expects the bromine industry and electronics market to recover and grow to new heights that growth may not occur in the coming year.
“Excess industry capacity in bromine and certain organometallics combined with continuing volatility in certain markets we serve has restricted our ability to achieve the targeted improvement in results. To meet our expected performance improvement in 2015, we are taking steps to address these challenges by accelerating initiatives to reduce our manufacturing costs and SG&A expenses, in addition to the elimination of stranded costs arising from the sale of our agrochemicals business,” said Craig A Rogerson, Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer, Chemtura.
“However, it is our responsibility to create the committed value in 2015. We believe the combination of our cost reduction actions and the investments we have made will enable us to deliver progressive performance improvement in 2015 without having to rely on recovery in demand from markets such as electronics or an improvement in our pricing levels,” said Rogerson.
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