MOSCOW (MRC) -- Mitsui Chemicals, a leading Japanese producer of performance materials, petro and basic chemicals and functional polymeric materials, has announced that its Shanghai Sinopec Mitsui Elastomers Co. joint venture with Sinopec has launched commercial production of ethylene propylene diene terpolymer (EPT), as per Apic-online.
In 2012, the two companies created the equally-owned joint venture to build a 75,000-t/y EPT plant using metallocene catalyst technology in China's Shanghai Chemical Industry Park. Operations were scheduled to begin during the first quarter of this year.
A separate joint venture of Mitsui and Sinopec, Shanghai Sinopec Mitsui Chemicals Co., is expected to begin production of phenol and acetone in December. The plant is designed to produce 250,000 t/y of phenol and 150,000 t/y of acetone.
Mitsui earlier said it planned to use production from this plant to supply its Tafmer alpha-olefin copolymer production in Jurong Island, Singapore.
In addition, Mitsui disclosed that its 60,000-t/y linear low-density polyethylene (LLDPE) plant in Chiba, Japan, is tentatively scheduled to close in December 2014.
As MRC informed before, last yeat, as part of a fundamental company's strategy Mitsui Chemicals and Prime Polymer, dedicated Japanese maker of polyethylene (PE) and polypropylene (PP), intensified an ongoing collaboration by increasing polypropylene (PP) production in the United States to meet growing demands of the automotive materials sector.
Mitsui Chemicals is a leading manufacturer and supplier of value added specialty chemicals, plastics and materials for the automotive, healthcare, packaging, agricultural, building, and semiconductor and electronics markets. Mitsui Chemicals is a Japanese Chemicals company, a part of the Mitsui conglomerate. The company has a turnover of around 15 billion USD and has business interests in Japan, Europe, China, Southeast Asia and the USA. The company mainly deals in performance materials, petro and basic chemicals and functional polymeric materials.
MRC