DuPont has announced the consolidation of its DuPont Packaging & Industrial Polymers business with its DuPont Performance Polymers business, as well as the consolidation of the DuPont Protection Technologies business with the DuPont Building Innovations business. Both consolidations will be effective on January 1, 2016. 

The consolidation will create greater efficiency and enhanced capabilities in the two segments where these businesses operate: the Performance Materials segment and the Safety & Protection segment, respectively. DuPont will continue to have six reporting segments.

“By bringing these business units together under common management structures, we are creating businesses of more significant scale to better serve our customers with more powerful science capabilities and stronger applications development,” says DuPont interim chair and CEO Edward Breen. “At the same time, this will lead to more effective deployment of capital in these businesses, while capturing savings in our cost structure and driving greater value for our shareholders.”

The combined DuPont Packaging & Industrial Polymers and DuPont Performance Polymers businesses, which will comprise the DuPont Performance Materials reporting segment, will be led by Patrick Lindner, currently president of DuPont Performance Polymers.

The combined DuPont Protection Technologies and DuPont Building Innovations businesses, which will be called DuPont Protection Solutions, will be led by Rose Lee, currently president of the DuPont Protection Technologies business. The combined business unit will continue as part of DuPont’s Safety & Protection reporting segment, which also includes the DuPont Sustainable Solutions business that will continue to be led by John Chrosniak as president.

Lindner will continue to report to DuPont executive vice president James Collins, while Lee will continue to report to Marc Doyle, senior vice president, DuPont Safety & Protection.

Lindner joined DuPont in 1996 as a chemist in Fluoroproducts. He spent the first four years of his career in R&D and held leadership positions in a range of marketing and venture roles. In 2006, he was named global business director of DuPontT Teflon fluoropolymers, later served as director in the DuPont Corporate Plans and Strategy group and as global business director for DuPont Electronics & Communications. He was named president of DuPont Performance Polymers in March 2014. He received his B.S. in chemistry from Hamilton College and his Ph.D. in chemistry from Dartmouth.

Lee joined DuPont in January 2015 as the global business director, DuPontT Kevlar and Aramid Intermediates, and was appointed president of DuPont Protection Technologies in October 2015. Prior to DuPont, Lee was vice president and general manager, Innovative Materials, for Saint-Gobain Corporation. She has held business and functional leadership roles at Saint-Gobain, Booz Allen & Hamilton, and the Pratt & Whitney division of United Technologies. She served as a member of the Economic Advisory Council for the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, Inc. She holds a B.S. degree in engineering from Cornell University, and an M.S. in engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and an M.B.A. from Massachusetts Institute of Technology.