Resin supply: Bayer, DuPont, ICO announce Ike impactsResin supply: Bayer, DuPont, ICO announce Ike impacts

Although the hurricane has long since passed through Texas, the petrochemical hub in and around the Houston area continues to regain its footing in Ike’s wake, with several producers declaring force majeure. On Sept. 19, Bayer MaterialScience LLC (Pittsburgh, PA), the North American subsidiary of Bayer MaterialScience AG (Leverkusen, Germany) made the declaration in response to outages and supply issues at its Baytown, TX production site. The move affects the company’s polyurethanes (PUR); coatings, adhesives, specialties (CAS); and polycarbonate (PC) business units as well as its inorganic basic chemicals segment, with brand names like Desmodur, Makrolon, Bayblend, and Makroblend impacted. Bayer said the move was necessitated by Ike’s destruction of “swaths of the infrastructure in the Houston region,” with the company adding that it is impossible to predict how long the supply disruption will last. Bayer said precautions taken helped spare its Baytown site from major effects, but the regional damage to transportation arteries would make it “difficult, if not impossible, to supply the site with raw materials.”