Georgia Gulf, a manufacturer of two integrated product lines, is the third-largest North American producer of vinyl chloride monomer. Georgia Gulf is also ranked third in North America as a producer of vinyl suspension resins and is the second-largest North American producer of vinyl compounds. On the aromatic side of the business Georgia Gulf is a merchant marketer of phenol and acetone and a global producer of cumene. The end-use applications of these products are found in the following areas; construction and renovation, engineered plastics, pulp and paper production, chemical intermediates, pharmaceuticals and consumer products.
In looking towards the second quarter results, Ed Schmitt, chairman, president and CEO made the following comments in June. "In addition to the impact of the plant outages, sales prices for aromatics products have dropped compared to the first quarter. While raw materials costs have also dropped, unfortunately we have had to work through our higher-priced inventories. These higher-priced inventories, coupled with the lower aromatics sales prices, are expected to adversely impact second quarter earnings. However, assuming prices stabilize at their expected levels, our June aromatics margins should be comparable to the strong first quarter aromatics margins.
"Sales volumes for many of our products are expected to be relatively flat compared to first quarter levels. We are not seeing the seasonal increase in volumes that we normally experience during the second-quarter as customers appear to be working down their raw materials inventories. "We remain optimistic regarding the long -term prospects of our businesses as industry analysts continue to project high operating rates for several of our products and overall good performance for this year."
Special Recognition
Under the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA's) National Emissions Standard for Hazardous Air Pollutants standard, the Vinyl Institute gave awards to two plants (recently acquired by Georgia Gulf) for efforts to improve worker safety and protect the environment.
IW 50 Best Manufacturing Company
