Koppers Inc., a wholly-owned subsidiary of Koppers Holdings Inc., to cease remaining production activities at its facility located in Follansbee, West Virginia, as the company says in the press release received by Lesprom Network.
As part of Koppers previously announced strategy to restructure and streamline the operating footprint of its Carbon Materials and Chemicals (CMC) business, the company had discontinued coal tar distillation processing at the Follansbee facility in 2016.
Subsequent to the commissioning of a new naphthalene refining plant in Stickney, Illinois, the company ceased naphthalene refining activities at the Follansbee facility in the 4Q 2018. This final development, which will ultimately affect 48 employees, is driven by market conditions over the past decade that resulted in lower overall supply of raw material from North American steel manufacturers and the long-term changing footprint of the aluminum sector in the United States.
The company expects to ramp down production over the next few months with plant decommissioning and tank cleaning activities to be completed by the 4Q 2020. The closure of Follansbee represents the final step in reducing the CMC global footprint of facilities from 11 to 4.
Koppers, with corporate headquarters in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, is an integrated global provider of treated wood products, wood treatment chemicals and carbon compounds.
