German chemicals company BASF has doubled capacity of its non-phthalate plasticiser Hexamoll Dinch from 100,000 to 200,000 tonnes/year at its site in Ludwigshafen, Germany. In other news, in China, BASF and Sinopec will build a new world-scale production plant for Neopentylglycol (NPG) at the BASF-YPC, a 50-50 joint venture, site in Nanjing. The plant, with a capacity of about 40,000 tonnes/year, is planned to go on stream at the end of 2015.

With a second Hexamoll Dinch plant BASF says it is satisfying growing customer demand and strengthening supply security worldwide. Hexamoll Dinch is a non-phthalate plasticiser especially developed for applications with close human contact. Due to steadily growing demand since its market launch in 2002, it has become an established plasticiser in food packaging, medical devices and toys. During the last few years there was also an increasing demand in the flooring and wall covering industry.

Meanwhile, in China, the new NPG plant will benefit from backward integration into the Nanjing Verbund site. NPG is a unique polyalcohol offering superior performance in many end-use applications such as coatings, textiles and construction due to its high chemical and thermal stability. It is mainly used as a building block in polyester resins for coatings, unsaturated polyester and alkyd resins, lubricants and plasticisers. As the global market leader, BASF has NPG production facilities in Ludwigshafen, Germany; Freeport, US and Jilin, China.