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MOSCOW (MRC) -- Synthetic rubber manufacturer
Arlanxeo Holding B.V. will close its Keltan EPDM plant in Orange in the second
quarter of 2020, reported RubbeNews
with reference to the company's press release.
Arlanxeo said it was
closing the Orange facility as part of a realignment of its Keltan production
network to improve competitiveness and harmonize technology platforms across the
Keltan portfolio.
The company said it would cooperate closely with
workers, customers and suppliers to minimize the impact of the
closure.
"We realize that the closure of Arlanxeo's Keltan EPDM unit will
have a deep impact on our people in Orange," said Christian Widdershoven,
executive vice president of high performance elastomers for Arlanxeo and a
member of the company's executive leadership team. "Taking care of our employees
that devoted time and efforts for the company over the last decades will be our
first priority."
The Orange facility has capacity to produce about 70,000
metric tons a year of Keltan EPDM and employs about 300.
Arlanxeo did not
say how many workers will be laid off because of the closure. It did say it
would seek "to minimize involuntary separations and to provide alternative
opportunities for those affected by the closure."
Christian Rooijakkers,
Arlanxeo vice president of marketing and sales HPE, said Arlanxeo's business
teams would support customers in North America and worldwide to make the
transition to specifically developed Keltan grades as smooth as
possible.
Arlanxeo will continue to make butadiene rubber and
hydrogenated nitrile butadiene rubber at the Orange facility, its only
production site in the US, the company said.
Arlanxeo did not give
further details about the EPDM business realignment, but the company recently
announced that it is steadily increasing sales of EPDM sold under Keltan KSA
brand.
These grades are being produced in Saudi Arabia by Petro Rabigh, a
50-50 joint venture between Arlanxeo owner Saudi Aramco and Sumitomo
Chemicals.
Arlanxeo is the sole distributor of Aramco's 50 percent share
of the JV plant's EPDM output, Rooijakkers said at the recent K2019 trade
fair.
Operational since 2018, the Petro Rabigh EPDM plant has a nameplate
capacity of 75,000 tons a year, and Rooijakkers said it has "ramped up according
to plan."
Arlanxeo also operates EPDM production facilities in Geleen,
Netherlands, and Changzhou, China, each with listed annual capacity of 160,000
tons, along with a 40,000 tons a year unit in Triunfo, Brazil.
The
company, then part of Lanxess, in 2016 closed down a 70,000 tons a year EPDM
production facility in Marl, Germany.
As MRC wrote before,
Arlanxeo is strengthening its market position by investing in its
high-performance elastomer products CR (chloroprene rubber) and NBR (nitrile
butadiene rubber), laying the foundation for the further increase of production
capacity in order to meet the increasing global demand of these polymers. The
turnaround of Arlanxeo's CR plant in Dormagen, Germany, announced in the
beginning of 2018, was successfully completed in October
2019, allowing for a production of up to 70,000 metric tons of CR per year.
The multiple million Euro investment to upgrade and modernize the plant is a
strong signal of Arlanxeo’s long-term commitment to the CR business, leading to
an increased flexibility and capability of the plant to produce specialty
products.
EPDM products are used in applications like automotive,
building & construction, plastics modification, consumer goods, cable &
wire, and tubes and for the production of high impact polypropylene
(PP).
According to MRC's ScanPlast
report, the estimated PP consumption in the Russian market was 976,790
tonnes in January-September 2019, up by 4% year on year. Shipments of PP block
copolymer and homopolymer PP increased.
Arlanxeo was established in April
2016 as a joint venture of Lanxess - a world-leading specialty chemicals company
based in Cologne, Germany - and Saudi Aramco - a major global energy and
chemicals enterprise headquartered in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia. The two partners
each hold a 50-percent interest in the joint venture. The business operations of
Arlanxeo are assigned to the High Performance Elastomers and Tire &
Specialty Rubbers business units. |
