FAIRLAWN, Ohio—LyondellBasell Industries is closing the former A. Schulman Inc. headquarters in Fairlawn, a move that will eliminate 43 jobs.
LBI—a global petrochemicals firm based in Houston and Rotterdam, Netherlands—acquired Schulman for $2.25 billion in February 2018.
LBI officials confirmed the closing and layoffs in a Nov. 18 letter to Ohio's Office of Workforce Development. Job cuts are expected to begin on or about Jan. 31, officials said in the letter.
Schulman had opened the 34,000-sq.-ft. Fairlawn headquarters building in May 2013 after moving from another site in that same city, which is located near Akron. Schulman had been founded as a rubber brokerage in Akron in 1928.
When it opened, the new Schulman headquarters employed around 140. The acquisition of Schulman, a leading compounder and concentrate maker in North America and Europe, as well as a resin distributor in Europe, allowed LBI to combine the business with its own compounding unit to create North America's largest compounder, which now operates as LBI's Advanced Polymer Solutions unit.
Schulman grew quickly through a series of acquisitions starting in 2008, but its $800 million purchase of compounding and thermoset firm Citadel Plastics in 2015 proved disastrous after problems rose with the quality of some materials made by some Citadel units.
In its 2016 fiscal year, Schulman took a $402 million charge related to the Citadel deal. Schulman had sales of almost $2.5 billion in 2017, its last full fiscal year before the acquisition.