Expansions: Sulzer opens tech centre in Singapore; DIC opens coating resins lab in India

Swiss chemical firm Sulzer has opened a new Innovation Technology Hub (InTecH) in Singapore’s Jurong Innovation District. The new 700-sq-m Singapore-based InTecH includes a chemical engineering R&D test centre, laboratories and small-scale production plants. Sulzer’s Singapore InTecH will test and deliver clean process technologies to enable sustainable manufacturing in the region.

The new Singapore InTecH is located in the JTC CleanTech Three within the Jurong Innovation District. To commemorate its launch, Sulzer hosted a ribbon-cutting ceremony.

Sulzer Executive Chairwoman Suzanne Thoma said: “We are delighted to expand our global network of advanced R&D, manufacturing and service facilities with our new Singapore InTecH. This investment strengthens our commitment to Singapore and the wider APAC region, where our process technologies and solutions will increasingly enable both prosperity and sustainability for our customers and the region.”

Sulzer Chemtech Division President Uwe Boltersdorf added: “From carbon capture to battery and plastic recycling or the production of bio-based chemicals, our separation processes are enabling the transition towards more eco-conscious, circular operations. We look forward to welcoming customers to our new InTecH, where we will drive development of innovative solutions for customer applications in the Asia Pacific region.”

JTC CleanTech Three is located right in the heart of Jurong Innovation District, a premier advanced manufacturing hub and Singapore’s first eco-business park master planned by JTC. The 600-ha District hosts a full value chain of Industry 4.0 activities from prototyping and test-bedding to production and distribution.

As a global hub for clean technology projects, urban and advanced manufacturing solutions, JTC CleanTech Three’s design creates a new, sustainable and integrated work-play environment essential to support the research and businesses in the estate.

In other news, Japan’s DIC Corporation has announced that two of its subsidiaries in India—DIC South Asia Private Limited in Mumbai and Ideal Chemi Plast Private in Badlapur—have together established the DIC South Asia Private Limited Application Lab, a dedicated laboratory for evaluating coating resins for automotive coatings and infrastructure applications. The new facility opened in February 2024.

DIC sees India’s coating resins market, currently growing at an annual rate of approximately 9%, as particularly promising and is working to expand its presence in the country, including by building a second production site at Ideal Chemi Plast, an acquisition which was completed in 2019. Production at the new site commenced in February 2024.

The company made the decision to establish the Application Lab with the goal of enabling it to respond swiftly to the needs of local customers and to propose comprehensive solutions that include not only recommending and supplying resins, but also providing compounding formulations and processed samples.

The Application Lab, run as an open laboratory, is jointly managed by DIC South Asia, which has provided equipment, and Ideal Chemi Plast, which administers the part of the industrial area in which the facility is located. DIC expects that its coating resins customers in India will make active use of this new open laboratory going forward and that the laboratory will help it to further improve the services it provides in the Indian market.

Its equipment on site includes a spray booth, sand mill, salt mist test device, and other coating resins equipment for evaluating coating resins.

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