Ineos Styrolution, an Ineos subsidiary, says it will build a 600,000-metric tons/year acrylonitrile-butadiene-styrene (ABS) production facility at Ningbo, China, adjacent to the company’s recently acquired polystyrene (PS) plant.
Construction is expected to begin this year, with completion scheduled for 2023, Styrolution says. No investment figure for the plant in eastern China has been given.
Ineos completed the acquisition for an undisclosed sum of two PS production sites in China from Total in February last year, one at Ningbo and the other at Foshan, southern China, after agreeing on the deal in 2018. Each PS facility has a production capacity of 200,000 metric tons/year. The Ningbo site also manufactures polypropylene compounds for automotive parts.
The announcement of the greenfield ABS project was made as part of a wider cooperation framework agreement signed by Ineos today with the Ningbo Municipal People’s Government. “China is the biggest ABS market in the world. This new investment will give us a tremendous opportunity to provide our customers in the region with locally produced ABS grades,” says Steve Harrington, Ineos’s president/APAC.
Styrolution is committed to supporting the growth of its customers in China by establishing local production capacities, adds its CEO Kevin McQuade.
Styrolution acquired in 2017 a styrene-butadiene copolymers business from Chevron Phillips Chemical and Daelim Industrial. Styrolution’s worldwide PS capacity, excluding the plants in China, is 1.766 million metric tons/year.
By Mark Thomas
Source: Chemical Week
The deal includes the 600kt Acetic Acid plant and all associated third party activities on the site. Eastman and INEOS have also entered into a Memorandum of Understanding to explore options for a long-term supply agreement for vinyl acetate monomer.
The Supervisory Board of Borealis has accepted the decision of Lucrèce Foufopoulos-De Ridder, EVP Polyolefins, Circular Economy Solutions and Innovation & Technology to step down from her executive position at Borealis, and the Board of Borouge Pte effective 31 December 2023 to pursue other career opportunities.
Sidel has launched a new 100% rPET bottle base, StarLiteR, aiming to help carbonated soft drink (CSD) packaging producers embrace material circularity. StarLiteR allows CDS producers to switch to rPET bottle production easily and efficiently, while significantly reducing the impact on product quality or packaging integrity.
