Dow aims to enter SE Asian market

Dow aims to enter SE Asian market

SINGAPORE (Reuter): Dow Chemical Co, the world's largest
producer of chlorine and caustic soda, is aiming to penetrate the
Southeast Asian market for these products, a company official
said yesterday.

"We virtually have zero market share (in Asia) and hope to
move about 100,000 tons by 1999," Rod Tate, marketing manager for
caustic soda Asia Pacific said in an interview.

Dow in June announced plans to build a chlorine plant in
Texas, U.S., and caustic soda plant in Germany which would raise
output of the two products to 6.2 million tons by 1999.

The company has around a 20-percent share in the one million
ton a year Australian caustic soda market.

Tate said Dow was looking particularly at Indonesia where
there was a big demand for the two products in the pulp and
paper, textile and petrochemical markets.

Dow was not targeting the traditional big Asian markets such
as China, South Korea or Thailand because these countries were
self sufficient.

Dow sells a lot of its chlorine derivative products such as
ethylene dichlorides and vinyl chloride monomer to several Asian
polyvinyl chloride (PVC) producers.

Asian PVC demand is forecast to grow at five percent annually
over the next few years.