MOSCOW (MRC) -- In a move that will allow the company to produce ethylene at its Iberville Parish plants and create an estimated 100 new direct jobs, Shintech has announced plans to invest USD1.4 billion at its facilities in the parish, as per BusinessReport.
Shintech, a North American subsidiary of Japan-based Shin-Etsu Chemical Co. Ltd. - the world’s largest PVC producer and a leading manufacturer of silicone and specialty chemicals - will also retain 335 existing direct jobs at its plants in Plaquemine and Addis with the investment, Louisiana Economic Development estimates.
Shintech expects to break ground on the project in the second quarter of this year, with completion of the project slated for the first half of 2018. LED says it began discussing the project with the company in December 2013. To secure it, the state is providing the company with an incentive package that includes a USD5 million performance-based grant to offset the cost of infrastructure improvements at the Plaquemine site, along with a USD5 million Modernization Tax Credit, to be claimed in equal installments over a five-year period. The company also will receive workforce training assistance through the LED FastStart program.
With roughly 5,700 acres on the Mississippi River southwest of Baton Rouge, Shintech’s Plaquemine and Addis plants chiefly produce PVC and vinyl chloride monomer, or VCM, the key ingredient from which PVC plastics are made.
As MRC wrote before, in 2013, Shintech Inc. unveiled its plans to add almost 700 million pounds of PVC capacity as part of a USD500 million expansion of its plants in Louisiana. The project also will include 660 million pounds of new capacity for PVC feedstock vinyl chloride monomer (VCM) and 440 million pounds of new capacity for caustic soda.
Shintech was founded in 1974 to produce polyvinyl chloride (PVC) resin. The catalyst for its current success came in 1976 when it became a wholly owned subsidiary of Shin-Etsu Chemical Co., Ltd. Since then Shintech has completed a series of production capacity expansions that combined aggressive domestic and export business plans with careful analysis of market conditions and customer needs. Currently, Shintech Inc. is the largest producer of polyvinyl chloride (PVC) in the United States.
MRC