SALT LAKE CITY - Huntsman Corp. has a new corporate headquarters building, dedicated on March 6 by former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. The 90,000-square-foot building sits high on a bench area of the Wasatch Mountains in the University of Utah Research Park, with commanding views of the Salt Lake valley.
Officials declined to comment on the cost of the facility.
Besides its function as an office building, the structure houses a museum and educational areas designed to give schoolchildren and other interested groups the history of plastics and the role Huntsman - both the company and its founder Jon Huntsman - has played in the development of the plastics industry.
``We want to give visitors an idea that we're more than just chemicals and resins,'' said Douglas Jardine, company spokesman.
The tour begins in an 88-seat theater where visitors see a 20-minute video about Huntsman Corp. One large room off the lobby is dedicated to Jon Huntsman's philanthropic work, such as Salt Lake's Primary Children's Hospital, and the new Huntsman Cancer Institute, to which he donated $100 million.
Each area is equipped with interactive computer screen displays so that visitors can learn about every aspect of the company and the industry.
In the center of the main lobby stands a scale model of an ethylene cracking furnace with color-coded piping and more interactive computer screens to take visitors through the process of ethylene cracking.
One room is dedicated to plastics and the products made from the resins Huntsman produces. In the room sits a 1929 injection molding machine, imported from Germany and used by Foster Grant Co. of Leominster, Mass., until 1954.
More interactive computer screens provide information on plastics processing, and even a game on plastics and the environment.
A glass case in one wall of the lobby displays the first expanded polystyrene egg carton mold and the first EPS clamshell fast-food container, items that mark the beginning of Huntsman Corp.
