In a deal that will combine the world’s largest chlorine producer with a big chlorine consumer, Olin and Huntsman have agreed to a merger of equals. The result will be a massive and diversified US chemical company with about $12.5 billion in annual sales.
Olin, incorporated in 1892, is one of the oldest names in the chemical industry. It posted $6.8 billion in sales in 2025. Its largest business, chlor-alkali, had $3.7 billion in sales of chlorine, caustic soda, chlorinated organics, and sodium hypochlorite. Olin has an epoxy unit that it acquired, along with some chlor-alkali capacity and chlorinated-organic operations, in the 2015 purchase of Dow’s chlorine-chemical business. In addition, Olin owns the ammunition manufacturer Winchester, which brought in $1.7 billion in sales last year.
Huntsman also has a long and storied history. Founded in 1982 by Jon M. Huntsman Sr. and built up mostly via acquisition, the company today has $5.7 billion in sales. Its polyurethane division, which makes methylene diphenyl diisocyanate (MDI) and other polyurethane materials, is its largest segment at $3.7 billion in revenue. Its performance-product segment produces ethyleneamines and maleic anhydride, and its advanced-materials segment makes specialties such as epoxies, curing agents, and carbon nanomaterials.
The combined company will be named OlinHuntsman and will be headquartered in the Woodlands, Texas, where Huntsman is based. After an exchange of stock, Olin and Huntsman shareholders will own 54.5% and 45.5% of the combined firm, respectively. The companies expect the deal to close during the first half of next year.
Company executives are touting how Olin’s chlorine and other raw materials can be used to manufacture Huntsman chemicals. They project $400 million in cost savings and other synergies from the combination.
“We will have a world-scale, vertically integrated platform that is better positioned to serve customers and deliver resilient financial performance,” Olin CEO Ken Lane, who will become CEO of OlinHuntsman, said in a conference call with analysts on June 16. “The combined portfolio also creates tangible integration opportunities across key value chains, supporting a lower cost position through the cycle.”
The raw-material integration touches each of Huntsman’s businesses, particularly its largest one. For example, Olin’s chlorine will feed Huntsman’s production of phosgene, a precursor to MDI. Olin’s ethylene dichloride will be used for Huntsman ethyleneamines. And Olin makes raw materials such as epichlorohydrin, which both companies use to produce epoxies, an area of chemistry overlap between them.
On the call, Peter Huntsman, who will be OlinHuntsman’s chairman, touted “the uniqueness of this combination, being able to start with sodium chloride, with the salt molecule, take that all the way down, really uninterrupted, to the wing of a Boeing or Airbus jetliner.”
The companies have not earmarked divestitures from the combined firm. “Winchester is going to continue to be a very important part of our portfolio,” Lane said. When asked by analysts, Peter Huntsman stressed that the firm will keep Huntsman’s advanced-materials business.
In a note to clients, Jefferies Financial Group stock analyst Laurence Alexander wrote that the new company will have a better balance sheet and better cash generation than the two firms separately. It will also have better long-term business opportunities in sectors such as electronic materials, battery materials, and defense. “We expect this to become more salient in 2029-2032,” Alexander wrote.
The reception from shareholders was more tepid: the stock price of both firms declined in the hours after the merger was announced.
