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Letter from the Site Leader — Joe Krkoska
 A challenging competitive environment, but a good year for Dow...
2004 was a year with challenges for Dow and for our Pittsburg site as our feedstock prices and hydrocarbon and energy prices continued to put a great squeeze on operating margins. Restructuring to improve our competitive position was necessary at our site and in fact across Dow globally as one mechanism to combat the erosion of margins, but also, to continue to drive ourselves to ever greater levels of performance. These changes in addition to other efforts, and an overall economic recovery globally, resulted in 2004 being a great year for Dow. This translated to excellent volume opportunities at our Pittsburg site, with several production records being set.
What we aim to do at our Pittsburg Site...
Our Pittsburg Site Mission is to responsibly make profitable products that improve the quality of life around the world by:
- Improving crop yields
- Protecting homes from insects
- Enhancing the performance of consumer products
- We aim to do this in a way that ensures we are a preferred employer and a valued neighbor in our community.
Our key goals for 2005...
Our ability to be successful at this mission depends on a number of factors, many of which are internal and within our control, such as Safety, Environmental, Productivity and Cost performance. Of particular interest to our site is our ability to become a world leader in safety performance. Although our safety record is excellent when compared to general industry, it is our goal at the Pittsburg Site to become a premier site globally and achieve an industrial injury rate approaching zero. We have developed detailed plans to make major gains in this area during 2005.
Factors affecting our ability to remain viable long term...
Other factors affecting our competitive position are of course external to a great degree. In particular for our site, regulatory load is a topic which needs attention, and we are doing all we can to work with elected officials locally and in Sacramento to support changes that will improve the business environment to help attract new business. Being successful at this is not only key for Dow operations in California, but for manufacturing viability in California at large.
A look forward...
The business outlook for 2005 remains strong. We of course always have challenges ahead, but we have a great team on site dedicated to meeting those challenges and keeping our customers happy while continuing to strive toward our “Vision of Zero” — zero injuries, zero harm to the environment!
This report is to share with you, key stakeholders in our success and indeed keepers of our license to operate, the details around a number of our site’s activities. We value our relationship with you and believe that sharing our data, our performance and our business objectives is central to continuing to build that relationship and earn our place in the community. On behalf of all of our site employees, thank you for your continued support!
Sincerely,
Joe Krkoska
Site Leader
Dow Pittsburg Operations
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