The Other Half of Every Penta Tonne

Perstorp's Toledo plant stopped making chemicals on September 2.

It will still be laying people off on July 1, 2027.

Those two dates come from different documents, and the gap between them is the part worth your afternoon. The company's own release is one sentence long on the subject: Perstorp Polyols, Inc. "confirms the permanent discontinuation of operations at its production facility in Toledo, Ohio, effective September 2." The Ohio WARN filing, which reporting in Toledo worked through this week, puts the layoffs in phases starting November 2 and running to that July date, more than 80 people, 70 percent of Perstorp's American workforce, production and maintenance and management and administration, fourteen process operators among them.

Ten months to close a plant that is already closed. That is a decommissioning calendar, and it is the closest thing to a schedule anyone outside the fence is going to get.

We covered the penta side of this eight days ago, when the release was fresh and no WARN notice was reachable. The import substitution was already visible then: American pentaerythritol imports up 19.2 percent in the first half against a domestic producer on the way out.

What we did not count was the other molecule.

"When the only US plant making a stoichiometric co-product shuts, where does the co-product go?"