MOSCOW (MRC) -- Prime Polymer Co., Ltd., a joint venture between Mitsui Chemicals, Inc. (Tokyo) and Idemitsu Kosan Co.,Ltd. (Tokyo), plans to start building a new polypropylene (PP) plant at its Ichihara Works in Chiba, Japan in August, 2021, according to Chemical Engineering.
The decision to construct a new manufacturing facility made in late May, 2021, is part of the company's plans for a scrap-and-build-style restructuring of its production system.
The new plant is slated to produce 200,000 mt/year of PP using licensed process technology from Mitsui Chemicals (the HYPOL process). Its operations are scheduled to start up in November 2024.
The new manufacturing facility to be constructed will enable the production of high-performance PP, something that has been unattainable with the facility used to date, and allow Prime Polymer to meet the growing needs for lightweighting and thinning in automotive materials. And through its offering of recycling-conducive materials here, Prime Polymer is looking to help drive material recycling.
Moving forward, Prime Polymer plans to suspend its existing manufacturing facility with a view to production capacity that is in line with supply-demand balance.
In restructuring its production system here, Prime Polymer anticipates the effect of approximately 70,000 tons in reduced greenhouse gas emissions annually against 2013 figures. Further, Prime Polymer will be ramping up its circular economy-related efforts through the likes of providing of biomass raw material-based materials.
As MRC reported earlier, in 2017, Mitsui Chemicals and Prime Polymer announced the completion and start-up of three augmented PP compound hubs. The group expanded two lines at its Advanced Composites subsidiary in the US. One line was enhanced at the group's Advanced Composites Mexicana site in Mexico and another line was augmented at Mitsui Prime Advanced Composites India in India. With the enhancements, Mitsui's total PP compound production capacity has increased to 1.05-million t/y from 1-million t/y.
According to MRC's ScanPlast report, PP shipments to the Russian market were 607,8900 tonnes in January-May 2021, up by 33% year on year. Shipments of homopolymer PP and PP block copolymers increased, whereas deliveries of PP random copolymers decreased.
Prime Polymer Co., Ltd. was established in April 2005 as part of a comprehensive tie-up with Mitsui Chemicals, Inc. and Idemitsu Kosan Co., Ltd. The company's activity is focused in polyolefins business to produce different grades of polythylene (PE) and polypropylene (PP).
MRC