Celanese to build acetic acid plant in China
5 Mar 2003
Celanese today announced that it has received Chinese government approval to build a world-scale acetic acid plant in the Jiangsu province. The plant will be located at the Nanjing Chemical Industry Park, Nanjing City, in eastern China.
According to a statement, the facility will have an annual capacity of 600,000 metric tons. Project activities are set to begin immediately, with production expected to begin in late 2005 or early 2006.
'The decision to build a facility in Nanjing City demonstrates our expectations for the Chinese market and our commitment to our core businesses and Asia as a whole,' said Claudio Sonder, Celanese CEO. 'Growth prospects in China are excellent, and we can deploy our state-of-the-art process technology to meet the growing need for acetic acid and derivatives.'
In China, Celanese has long-standing joint ventures in cellulose acetate tow. In addition, groundbreaking for a new polyacetal engineering plastics joint venture site is expected to take place in mid-2003 in Nantong, China.
'We view the Celanese acetic unit as one of the most important projects in the park, as acetic acid is one of the three anchor products upon which we will be basing our chemical industry development in the area,' said Mr. Lu Yi, General Manager of the Nanjing Chemical Industry Park.
