Америкалық «Истман Кемикал» компаниясы

American chemicals company

Eastman Chemical Company is an American company primarily involved in the chemical industry. Once a subsidiary of Kodak, today it is an independent global specialty materials company that produces a broad range of advanced materials, chemicals and fibers for everyday purposes. Founded in 1920 and based in Kingsport, Tennessee, the company operates 36 manufacturing sites worldwide and employs approximately 14,000 people. In 2021 it had sales revenue of approximately $10.5 billion.

Eastman manufactures and markets chemicals, fibers, and plastics. It provides coatings, adhesives and specialty plastics products, is a major supplier of cellulose acetate fibers, and produces copolyesters for packaging. The company's products and operations are managed and reported in four operating segments: Additives & Functional Products, Advanced Materials, Chemical Intermediates, and Fibers. The adhesives were patented in 1956. In 1994, Eastman was spun off from Eastman Kodak and became an independent corporation. In early 2005, Eastman broke ground on the first world scale manufacturing facility using IntegRex, a technology that reduces the number of intermediate process steps in producing PET resin. This technology is now owned by DAK Americas. Since 2000, Eastman, and its many subsidiaries have paid more than $82 million in EPA fines. In July 2012, Eastman completed its acquisition of Solutia Inc., a manufacturer of performance materials and specialty chemicals, for $4.8 billion. In December 2014, Eastman Chemical Company completed its acquisition of Taminco Corporation for $2.8 billion.

On the morning of October 4, 2017, an explosion occurred at Eastman's Kingsport Plant around the coal gasification building. In April 2018, the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation determined the cause to be a valve blockage due to slurry or debris intrusion.

In 2019, Eastman began commercial scale chemical recycling for a broad set of waste plastics that would otherwise be placed in a landfill or incinerated. Eastman Advanced Circular Recycling technologies complement mechanical recycling by processing a wide spectrum of waste plastics that traditional recycling methods cannot, including polyesters, polypropylene, polyethylene, and polystyrene. These waste plastics are derived from a variety of sources, including single use plastics, textiles, and cuttings from discarded carpet. Eastman's recycling technologies carbon renewal technology and polyester renewal technology provide a true circular solution of infinite recycling for materials, allowing them to be reused repeatedly. Eastman began commercial operation of carbon renewal technology in October 2019 at the company's largest manufacturing facility in Kingsport, Tennessee. In 2020, Eastman will use carbon renewal technology to recycle millions of pounds of polyester carpet that would otherwise have been placed in a landfill. In January 2021, Eastman announced plans to build a methanolysis plant that will convert polyester waste into durable products. The company expects to spend approximately $250 million to build the facility. When completed by the end of 2022, the methanolysis plant will use over 100,000 metric tons of plastic waste that cannot be recycled by current mechanical methods to produce premium, high quality specialty plastics made with recycled content. In January 2022, Eastman announced it would invest up to $1 billion in a material to material molecular recycling facility in France that would use Eastman's polyester renewal technology to recycle up to 160,000 tons annually of plastic waste. The plant is expected to be operational by 2025.

An April 2017 article in The Daily Beast reported that Eastman Chemical's plant in Uruapan, Michoacán bought pine rosin (refined, solidified resin) from a supplier that was known to be controlled by the Knights Templar criminal cartel, even after being notified of the supplier's criminal links. The supplier (Unored) was using the cartel to extort the raw pine resin gatherers to accept sub market prices, with a portion of the reduction passed on to Eastman in lower prices.