Grassian didn’t specify how many people Goodyear's chemical business employs in Akron, but he said its R&D facility has a substantial footprint in town and employees in both Akron and Europe.
“We have an R&D footprint at our research building. ... At our headquarters in Akron we have an entire innovation center in the building housing R&D teams,” Grassian said. Those operations, along with its innovation center in Luxembourg, employ about 1,800 people, he said.
Grassian did not break out the number of local employees, but several hundred of those jobs are in Akron. About 1,000 work at the Luxembourg innovation center, according to published reports in Europe.
In Akron, where Goodyear employs about 2,600 people in total, its chemical employees work at the company’s research and development building on Archwood Avenue, and at the corporate headquarters on Innovation Way in East Akron.
On top of those operations, the company has chemical production plants in Bayport, Houston and Beaumont, Texas, and in Niagara Falls, New York.
How those employees are affected by a sale would likely depend on who buys the chemical operations.
A strategic corporate buyer might cut jobs it finds are redundant with its existing operations, while a private equity buyer might do the opposite and invest in the chemical businesses in order to grow them.
The company has a good chance of selling its chemical business, said Bill Ridenour, an investment banker who specializes in mergers and acquisitions involving chemical companies as the president and owner of Polymer TransAction Advisors, a North Carolina company that Ridenour originally ran in Northeast Ohio.
Ridenour said that while 2024 was a down year for chemical-sector transactions, he’s optimistic there will be more deals this year. Easing interest rates are helping buyers, particularly private equity firms, he said, and there’s growing interest in U.S. firms from foreign competitors.
“There’s a good possibility that European strategic buyers and even private equity will come here,” Ridenour said.
And even while deals were down last year, pricing held up. Private equity firms are under pressure to invest simply because they have substantial cash from exiting other deals and from investors who continue to back them and want to see their money put to work, Ridenour said.
“Therefore M&A prices remained high in 2024,” he said.
As for strategic buyers, they see the U.S. as an especially attractive market, especially for chemical operations such as Goodyear’s, which stand to benefit from increased drilling for oil and gas—major feedstocks for chemicals—along with tax reductions promised by incoming President Donald Trump.
“Everyone is pretty optimistic about seeing an economic turnaround in plastics and rubber,” Ridenour said. “What we see is acquisition prices remaining high and we think M&A activity will be high ... in the second quarter, especially.”
Tariffs, meanwhile, are expected to give a boost to the sales and profits of operations in the U.S., while hindering foreign operations that export to the U.S. from abroad, he said.
“It all points to a lot of European business interest in the U.S.,” Ridenour said.
Unfortunately, if Goodyear does sell to a strategic buyer in Europe or Asia, that might be the worst-case scenario for U.S. employees. It would also be bad news for Akron and other cities that rely on their jobs to help support their local economies and tax coffers.
“Most definitely, because a strategic buyer might cut jobs, it might cut operations," Ridenour said.
As for Goodyear itself, Ridenour said it might not do as well as it and its investors hope in terms of pricing.
Ridenour said the chemical operations that the company has today are mature and largely produce chemicals used in tire manufacturing and related activities. Those chemicals largely have been commoditized and are less profitable than more advanced chemicals, Ridenour said.
But, coming off two years of losses and under pressure to streamline and improve its balance sheet, Ridenour Goodyear might be motivated to sell.
“I frankly think that Goodyear is between a rock and a hard place here," he said. "Their chemicals business is a commodity business that has little value added. They seemed to be keeping it so far because a captive business may have some added value to the core tire operations as a cost-effective, controllable source of supply."
Goodyear might end up talking to the same buyers who purchased its off-road and Dunlop tire businesses. In other words, other tire companies could use that same captive supply chain for their new U.S. operations.
“It is hard for me to see any value-added potential to anyone except to a fellow tire manufacturer as a possible consolidation and cost-cutting strategy,” Ridenour said. “And they are all stressed right now.”