The Only Chemical Left at Fieldsboro Was Sulfuric Acid
Stepan's third-quarter filing landed Wednesday and split the Project Catalyst write-down by site: $42.1 million of $61.3 million at Fieldsboro, New Jersey, a plant that does not appear in the company's own list of principal properties. EPA's filing record says the site had been down to one reportable chemical since 2018, and its output never fell.
Stepan took three plant actions this year and wrote off $61.3 million doing it.
Two thirds of that money landed on one site, and it is the site you cannot find in the company's own list of principal physical properties.
"What was still running at Fieldsboro when the board voted to close it?"
One chemical. The filings say so, and they have said so since 2018.
The plant that isn't in the table
Stepan's 2025 Form 10-K lists ten principal physical properties. Millsdale at Elwood, Illinois (492 acres, surfactants and polymers), Winder in Georgia (202 acres), Maywood in New Jersey (19 acres), Pasadena in Texas (51 acres), Voreppe in France, Ecatepec in Mexico, Nanjing, Vespasiano in Brazil, the technology center at Northfield and the Northbrook headquarters.
Fieldsboro, New Jersey is not on it. Neither is Stalybridge in the UK.
In February the board approved Project Catalyst and, inside it, three footprint moves: shut Fieldsboro, decommission select assets at Millsdale, decommission select assets at Stalybridge. All three sat in the Surfactants segment. The whole program was pitched at approximately $100 million in pre-tax savings over two years, and the announcement went out inside an earnings release rather than an Item 2.05 8-K, so there is no exit-cost filing to read.
Now, put the money next to the disclosure (chart below).
The rest of this brief is for subscribers.
The capacity math, the trade-flow read, and what it means for the products you buy.
$50 a month, or $400 a year.
Already a subscriber? Sign in