BASF is planning to build an engineering plastics compounding facility and a TPU plant as part of its proposed verbund (integrated) site in Zhanjiang, China, said the company.

The Zhanjiang project will boost the company's overall production capacity for engineering plastic compounds in China by 60,000 tonnes/y and in the entire Asia-Pacific region to 290,000 tonnes/y. Capacity details for the TPU site were not disclosed. BASF will invest approximately USD10 bn to develop the site, which comes after the company signed a memorandum of understanding with the Guangdong Provincial Government in July 2018.

It is considered BASF's third largest site in the world after the facilities in Ludwigshafen, Germany, and Antwerp, Belgium.

The company recently commissioned 15,000 tonnes/y of additional capacity for its Ultramid PA and Ultradur PBT products at its compounding plant in Altamira, Mexico. The expansion brings BASF's global compounding capacity for PBT and PA to over 750,000 tonnes/y.

As MRC informed earlier, BASF would expand the capacity of ethylene oxide and ethylene oxide derivatives at its Verbund site in Antwerp, Belgium. The total investment adds about 400 000 tpy to BASF’s production capacity for the corresponding products with an expected investment amount exceeding EUR500 million.

Ethylene is a feedstock for producing polyethylene (PE).

According to MRC's ScanPlast report, Russia's estimated PE consumption totalled 1,255,800 tonnes in the first seven months of 2019, up by 9% year on year. Shipments of all PE grades increased.

BASF is the leading chemical company. It produces a wide range of chemicals, for example solvents, amines, resins, glues, electronic-grade chemicals, industrial gases, basic petrochemicals and inorganic chemicals. The most important customers for this segment are the pharmaceutical, construction, textile and automotive industries.

Source: MRC