APIC ’08: BASF Nanjing expansion on track

27 May 2008 11:33  [Source: ICIS news]

By Abdul Hadhi

SINGAPORE (ICIS news)--German chemical giant BASF's plans to expand its petrochemical complex in Nanjing, China are on track for start-up in two years, senior officials said in an interview on Tuesday.

They added that the Sichuan earthquake earlier this month had not affected their plans for a methyl di-p-phenylene isocynate (MDI) project in neighbouring Chongqing.

First, "start-up for (Nanjing) should be at end-2010 or early 2011," Albert Heuser, President of its petrochemicals division said on the sidelines of the Asia Petrochemical Industry Conference (APIC).

"[Government] approval is expected in the third quarter of this year."

"Cost of the project should be about $900m (€567m). But we are looking at it in more detail and the (eventual) cost will reflect prices in global engineering markets," he added.

He was joined in the interview by Sanjeev Gandhi, BASF Group vice-president for Asia-Pacific petrochemicals.

The world’s biggest chemical group by sales views Asia as the growth market for the foreseeable future and was investing heavily to benefit from the trend in the years to come.

BASF and its project partner, Sinopec, had already poured $2.9bn into the Nanjing complex in the first phase - the largest single investment in BASF’s 140-year history.

As part of the $900m expansion, the company planned to increase ethylene capacity at its existing 600,000 tonne/year cracker by another 140,000 tonnes/year.

It also planned to expand its ethylene oxide plant and further develop EO derivatives.

This would involve producing non-ionic surfactants for detergents and solvent butylglycol ether as well as new projects to produce ethanolamines and ethyleamines.

Capacity for amines was expected to be 130,000 tonnes/year while butyl glycols capacity would be around 80,000 tonnes/year, Heuser said.

As part of the expansion, Heuser added that the project would produce butadiene (BD) and isobutene as chemical raw materials, 2-propylheptanol for new generation plasticizers and polyisobutene derivatives as fuel and lubricant additives.

The project would also extend the acrylics value chain to produce super absorbent polymers (SAP) and increase its oxo-alcohols capacity to 305 tonnes/year from 250,000 tonnes/year by the end of the year.

On to the impact of the Sichuan quake, Heuser said the plans for an MDI plant in Chongqing were unchanged and were "like it was announced".

BASF and Chongqing Chemical and Pharmaceutical had planned to start commercial production at their 400,000 tonne/year project in 2012 and have submitted a feasibility study to the authorities.

Measuring 8.0 on the Richter scale, the 12 May quake which devastated the southwest Sichuan region was the biggest China had experienced in more than 30 years.

($1 = €0.63) 

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By: Abdul Hadhi
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