Plant Expansions: Sichuan Shengda opens 1 mn tonne/year PTA plant in China; Nippon Shokubai breaks ground on acrylic acid plant in Indonesia

Invista’s technology and licensing group, Invista Performance Technologies (IPT), Sichuan Shengda Chemical New Material Co., Ltd (Sichuan Shengda) and Sichuan Energy Investment Chemical New Material Co., Ltd (Sichuan Energy) announce the successful start-up of Sichuan Shengda’s purified terephthalic acid (PTA) plant. On-specification production was achieved on May 24, 2019.

This plant, located in Nanchong, Sichuan province, utilises Invista’s proprietary P7 PTA process technology, with a nameplate capacity of 1 million tonnes/year. This plant also uses Invista’s proprietary R2R technology for production of benzoic acid as co-product.

According to Invista, with this start-up, IPT has now successfully commissioned seven PTA projects totalling over 11 million tonnes/year capacity since 2015.

Meanwhile, in other news, Japan’s Nippon Shokubai recently held a groundbreaking ceremony for the expansion of its acrylic acid plant in Cilegon, Banten, Indonesia.

Acrylic acid, one of Nippon Shokubai’s core businesses, shows steady growth of demand as a key material for superabsorbent polymers (SAP) and acrylates (AES). In recent years, the demand and supply balance of acrylic acid is highly tight especially in Asia, said the firm. To accommodate the demand and fulfill its responsibility to supply products, Nippon Shokubai concluded to expand the capacity of its plant in Indonesia in October 2018.

With this new plant, Nippon Shokubai group’s global acrylic acid production capacity will be increased from 880,000 to 980,000 tonnes/year, it said.

Established in 1996, the Indonesian plant is owned by Nippon Shokubai and its current capacity is 140,000 tonnes/year and will be increased to 240,000 tonnes/year after the completion of the expansion in 2021. The company is investing US$200 million into the expansion exercise.

(PRA)

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