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Formosa Chemicals & Fibre
About the company
Grade summary
The available information suggests that Formosa Chemicals & Fibre Corporation does not produce any hazardous chemicals. However, 92% of production takes place outside the EU and US, which means that data on the lion’s share of the Taiwanese company’s production is not publicly available. The company does not have a method in place to screen and assess the sustainability of its products nor does it have a phase-out strategy for hazardous substances. The company follows several voluntary standards of good conduct, but has nonetheless been involved in numerous environmental scandals over the last ten years, including several explosions at company facilities.
Opportunities for improvement
- The environmental pollution and negative health effects caused by mismanagement from the Taiwanese company need to be avoided in the future. Formosa Chemicals & Fibre should, therefore, improve safety processes and train employees in order to reduce environmental incidents.
- Add transparency to the hazardous product portfolio. We can only rank 8% of the company’s overall production since the rest takes place outside the EU and US. For other regions there are no reliable and publicly available sources for identifying producers of hazardous chemicals. Informing ChemSec of hazardous chemical production outside of the EU and US could help raise the company’s score
- Formosa Chemicals & Fibre Corporation has one of the lowest overall scores on ChemScore. A first step to improve a company’s chemicals management is to have an overview of where and how much hazardous chemicals are being used. The company should, therefore, implement a screening method to increase knowledge of the company’s production and use of hazardous chemicals.
Category breakdown
Formosa Chemicals & Fibre Corporation does not produce any SIN List substances, nor does the company produce any chemicals present on the REACH Candidate List or the REACH Authorisation List. It does not produce any persistent chemicals either. However, no data is available for the 92% of the company’s production that takes place outside the EU and US.
Formosa Chemicals & Fibre Corporation does not have a method in place to screen and assess the sustainability of its products and, therefore, does not investigate the intrinsic hazards of ingredients. The company does not make use of the GreenScreen assessment tool nor does it exclude substances with toxic properties from new products. The company does not follow the principles of green chemistry, but does actively market safer alternatives on its website.
The Taiwanese company shares chemical safety information on its website but does not have a phase-out strategy for hazardous substances. Formosa Chemicals & Fibre Corporation is a member of Responsible Care and follows voluntary standards such as a Code of Conduct and a Supplier Code of Conduct.
In 2017, the company was hit with a big fine when it had to pay more than 40 million USD for environmental breaches at one of its plants in Taiwan. The same year, an explosion at one of the company’s plants in a different region of Taiwan left four employees injured. Two years later, local residents from the same region had to be evacuated following an explosion at the aromatics plant operated by Formosa Chemical and Fiber. In 2019, the company was also accused of manipulating emissions data and fined by a county government.
Download detailed information on controversies (PDF, 113 KB)How did we come to this score?
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