State Tax Breaks Spur Midland Investment

MIDLAND, MI-Two multi-million dollar industrial expansions have been announced in the metro area. Dow Corning will combine operations currently in Florida, California and Connecticut at a new $21.7 million facility in Williams Township near the city. Dow AgroSciences will invest $17 million to update a 1950s-era herbicide processing plant at Dow Chemical’s Michigan Operations site.

“Dow Corning and Dow AgroScience have long been partners in Michigan’s ongoing economic success,” Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm says. “These new quality jobs will provide a boost to both the local and state economies.”

Granholm says the Michigan Economic Development Corporation offered several incentives to the projects, which the governor says is expected to create 164 new jobs.

Dow Corning will receive a high-tech Single Business Tax credit valued at $4.5 million over 12 years. In partnership with the MEDC, Williams Township is expected to approve a tax abatement worth $2.4 million. The new facility will manufacture semiconductor materials and provide research and development services to the emerging compound semiconductor industry.

The MEDC has awarded a brownfield Single Business Tax Credit of not more than $1 million to Dow AgroScience help bring the obsolescent facility up to current chemical manufacturing standards. The City of Midland also approved a tax abatement worth $1.2 million to help facilitate the project.

The revitalized plant will manufacture a new rice herbicide that is scheduled to be launched in 2005.