Fernando Signorini wears many hats in his roles as Vice President, U.S. Gulf Coast Operations and Dow’s Texas Operations site director.
In his VP role, which he has held since June 2021, he is responsible for all of Dow’s U.S. Gulf Coast assets, accounting for approximately 40% of the company’s global capacity. Additionally, he is responsible for 10 advanced manufacturing sites, the company’s state-of-the-art R&D Texas Innovation Center and the Houston Dow Center, a strategic engineering and business hub.
Signorini also sits on the board of directors for the Texas Chemical Council, Greater Houston Partnership and Economic Development Alliance of Brazoria County. In 2022, he was named Engineer of the Year by the Hispanic Engineer National Achievement Awards Conference, distributed by Great Minds In STEM.
Dow’s Signorini: Effective leadership, company-wide excellence
Dow’s Texas Operations is a healthy contributor to its community and maintains a supreme standard of excellence.
As site director of Texas Operations, he is accountable for the success of all operational elements, and most importantly, provides an overall strategic leadership. Signorini drives continuous improvement in areas such as environmental, health and safety standards, and maintains Dow’s license to operate by developing and maintaining strong relationships with community, state and federal political and regulatory leaders. Needless to say, he goes to great lengths to maintain excellence in Dow’s endeavors.
Signorini was born and raised in São Paulo, Brazil. He attended Instituto Mauá de Tecnologia, a private university based in São Paulo that features one of the best engineering programs in Brazil. Three years into the five-year program, Signorini started his relationship with Dow after following the advice of one of his professors and applied for a co-op position with the company.
Signorini said the most important skills needed for someone in this position are the abilities to prioritize and align the organization around key objectives; to translate the company’s objectives into actionable, pragmatic goals and objectives; and to inspire the organization to reach higher levels of performance by fostering open communication, engaging everyone in the solution and creating an inclusive and psychologically safe environment for people to innovate and thrive. Thinking big and creating a vision without losing site of what is reality is key.
Signorini believes this philosophy has always lined up perfectly with Dow’s. Headquartered in Midland, Michigan, Dow just celebrated 125 years of operations. The first site outside of Midland, known as Texas Operations, was built in Freeport, Texas, in 1940 and is Dow’s largest integrated manufacturing site. It’s also the largest single company chemical complex in the world, with more than 40 production plants that manufacture over 40% of Dow products sold in the U.S. and 25% sold globally.
Research, development and manufacturing at Dow’s Texas sites produce key ingredients and innovations that enable the creation of hundreds of everyday products, such as paints, adhesives, sealants, paper, coatings, caulk, electronics, food packaging, health care necessities and other household and industrial products.
Holly Garcia
Dow’s Signorini: Effective leadership, company-wide excellence
Fernando Signorini, Vice President, U.S. Gulf Coast Operations, Site Director, Dow Texas Operations Company
Signorini enjoys knowing the products being produced by Dow help deliver a better life to so many people, but his No. 1 goal always comes back to workplace safety.
“I think the biggest challenge comes from making sure Dow maintains a safe environment for employees, contractors and the community,” he stated. “There is nothing more important than this as we strive to hold ourselves to higher standards. I am proud to work for a company that is relentless in the pursuit of best-in-class safety performance.”
Dow has a strong safety culture throughout the company. The year 2021 was record-setting in terms of safety performance at Texas Operations, however, as more employees returned to the workplace, Signorini said he did see a slight uptick in minor injuries. A renewed emphasis on eliminating distractions and focusing on the task at hand resulted in a downward trend for the second half of 2022.
In 2021, Dow’s employee and contractor injury rate for large American Chemical Council companies was 0.16. Dow’s 2021 Process Safety Containment Event (PSCE) Tier 1+2 rate for large American Chemical Council companies was .08, the lowest in the category.
As for Dow’s community involvement, Signorini said from event sponsorships to STEM grants to local K-12 schools and community colleges to logging hundreds of volunteer hours with local non-profit organizations, the team at Dow is committed to the success of its community
Community involvement not only directly aids local families, but also provides further opportunity for employees in the communities surrounding every Dow facility to show that they are committed to being a good neighbor and supportive partner.
Regarding new sites, Dow is currently building an integrated methylene diphenyl diisocyanate distillation and prepolymers facility at its world-scale manufacturing site in Freeport, Texas. This investment supports increasing demand for downstream polyurethane products and advances Dow’s leading positions in attractive applications in construction, consumer and industrial markets.
Dow is also building a new global scale polyethylene plant in Freeport, Texas, that would utilize raw materials from both internal and external sources to produce linear low- density polyethylene (LLDPE).
Signorini also had much to say on how legislation is affecting industry. He stated one of his primary concerns is establishing a new school district property tax incentive program.
“While we were disappointed that the previous program wasn’t renewed, we look at this as an opportunity to come up with a better and more transparent program that can still benefit all involved while providing incentive for companies like Dow to locate new investments or perhaps even modernize current older assets,” he said.
Energy costs are also a top consideration for industry. In 2021, the Legislature passed SB 3 to fix issues discovered during Winter Storm Uri. Signorini feels it is important to give SB 3 implementation time to work and not make further significant changes to the market structure that will continue to drive energy costs up.
Of additional concern is the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ), which will be up for review during the upcoming session. Signorini believes there are some changes that could be made regarding accessibility in permitting to modernize TCEQ, but the Legislature should be cautious not to make large scale changes to the actual process.
He further explained that Texas Operations is a landmark manufacturing site for Dow, and this location has catapulted Dow into the future. With more than 80 years of history in Texas, the site has evolved and has reinvented itself several times. The energy transformation and sustainability efforts will create a unique opportunity to once again reshape its asset footprint at the site. In Texas and in Brazoria County, it found a great platform to innovate with customers, partner with communities and operate assets in a safe and reliable way.
For more information, visit dow.com.
