Dow establishes supply chain center in Northern Ireland

The Dow Chemical Company has announced that it will be establishing a new supply chain center.

The Dow Design & Modify Supply Chain Center will be located in Belfast, Northern Ireland, and is designed to help the company's supply chain remain agile and respond to emerging social trends, economic changes and customer needs around the world.

Belfast was selected as the site of the new center due to its high concentration of engineering graduates, Northern Ireland's collaborative approach to government, academia and business and its centralized location relative to the rest of Europe, Africa and the Middle East, where Dow does much of its business.

"Selecting Belfast as the location for the expansion of our global supply chain organization is a meaningful example of our commitment to strategic investments that support our long-term business objectives while also enabling us to have a positive impact on a region and community," explained Andrew Liveris, CEO and chairman of Dow.

"As a world-class global manufacturing organization, having a world-class infrastructure and supply chain capability is absolutely critical to our business," added Dave Kepler, executive vice president of business services, CIO and CSO at Dow. "This Supply Chain Center in Belfast will help us continue to find ways to reduce time to market, speed delivery to our customers and lower costs. We're pleased to strengthen our presence in a community with world-class intellectual talent."

In 2009, Dow's sales exceeded $45 billion and the company employed approximately 52,000 people worldwide. Dow manufactures more than 5,000 products at 214 sites in 37 countries across the globe.