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nother company considering venturing into HPPO production is BASF's joint venture company with Sinopec, BASF YPC. This is one of the projects being considered to expand the integrated petrochemical joint venture in China, with an investment of up to US$1 billion for all the projects.

Other new projects under consideration will extend the C3 and C4 value chains, including the construction of a 160,000 tonnes/year acrylic acid facility, butyl acrylate plant and the capacity increases at the 2-propylheptanol, styrene monomer and non-ionic surfactants plants. The superabsorbent polymers (SAP) plant, to be constructed as the final part of the ongoing expansion project, will be supplied with feedstock from the acrylic acid facility.

The final scope of the investments under consideration will be determined following joint feasibility studies for each of the projects.

These planned new investments are a further expansion for BASF-YPC, adding to the currently ongoing joint investment of US$1.4 billion in state-of-the-art technologies to produce downstream specialty chemicals for the Chinese market, serving multiple industries such as construction, electronics, pharmaceutical, automotive and chemical manufacturing. Construction is approximately 50% complete.

Since 1986 when BASF and Sinopec established their first joint venture, Shanghai Gaoqiao BASF, they further jointly invested in Yangzi-BASF Styrenics in 1997, BASF-YPC in 2000 and the expansion project of BASF-YPC in 2009. The total joint investment is more than EUR3.7 billion.