Dow sells stake in Dow Kokam to MBP

The Dow Chemical Company has agreed to sell its stake in Dow Kokam LLC to MBP Investors LLC, an affiliate of Townsend Ventures. With this transaction, MBP has become the majority owner of Dow Kokam, which includes the Midland Battery Park in Michigan and the Lee’s Summit facility in Missouri.
 
Dow’s decision to exit from Dow Kokam aligns with Dow’s market participation strategy and investment prioritisation decisions driven by improving return on capital and total shareholder return. In addition, Dow is focusing on the materials portion of the battery value chain, not batteries themselves. As a founder of Dow Kokam and owner of MBP, Townsend’s decision to purchase Dow’s interest in Dow Kokam aligns with its global strategy to continue investing in and providing leadership and support to emerging technologies in the energy storage market.
 
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Andrew N Liveris, Chairman and CEO, Dow, said, “Today’s announcement is another example of Dow’s strategic actions to narrow our market participation. It demonstrates our commitment to prioritising and aligning our portfolio towards select, targeted end-use markets with the objective to accelerate value creation and deliver long-term, sustainable growth for Dow and its shareholders. We remain committed to delivering competitively advantaged solutions to the battery market through our battery materials business, where our position in the value chain is strategic and margin growth opportunities are clear.”
 
Dow Kokam currently provides high-performance advanced energy storage solutions to a wide-range of customers in the fleet transportation, stationary storage, marine, defense and industrial markets. Dow Kokam designs and manufactures large-format nickel manganese cobalt (NMC) lithium-ion cells and systems that deliver advanced battery solutions with energy, power, lifetime, safety and cost advantages. Dow Kokam’s Midland Battery Park includes one of the highest capacity, large format lithium ion battery manufacturing plants in the world.