BRASKEM:Brazilian Polyolefins Giant Opens First European Technology Centre
Brazilian polyolefins producer Braskem (São Paulo; www.braskem.com) inaugurated its new European Technology Centre at Wesseling / Germany on 7 October. Built at a cost of around EUR 5m, the new centre near Cologne is its first in Europe, complementing similar facilities in Triunfo / Brazil and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania / USA (see Plasteurope.com of 29.07.2016).
Simultaneously, the Brazilian group celebrated the 25th anniversary of the start of production at Wesseling. Braskem picked up the site from Dow Chemical in 2011 – as part of its acquisition of the US chemical producer’s polypropylene business (see Plasteurope.com of 05.10.2011). According to PIE’s Polyglobe capacity database (www.polyglobe.net), Braskem’s Wesseling site can produce 225,000 t/y of PP.
Braskem is a Brazilian petrochemical company headquartered in São Paulo. The company is the largest petrochemical company in Latin America and has become a major player in the international petrochemical market (8th largest resin producer worldwide).
Products
Braskem is the Americas’ top thermoplastic resins producer. With 36 industrial plants spread across Brazil, United States and Germany, the company produces over 16 million tons of thermoplastic resins and other petrochemicals per year. Braskem is the world’s leading biopolymers producer with its 200,000 tons Green PE plant that produces polyethylene from sugarcane-based ethanol.
Basic Petrochemicals
Braskem controls the three largest petrochemical complexes in Brazil, located in the cities of Camaçari (Bahia), Mauá (São Paulo) and Triunfo (Rio Grande do Sul). Besides these three petrochemical complexes, Braskem also controls a complex in Duque de Caxias (Rio de Janeiro) which is based on gas rather than naphtha. Its basic petrochemical units account for the supply of ethylene and propylene to the company’s nearby polymer units. The company also produces other chemical products such as benzene, butadiene, toluene, xylene and isoprene. These compounds are mostly sold to other chemical companies based within the complexes, such as Innova, Elekeiroz and Dow Chemical.
Although its main feedstock is naphtha, the company Braskem’s Green Ethylene plant was inaugurated in September, 2010. This green ethylene plant is an important step forward in the strategy of becoming a global leader in sustainable chemicals. The plant is the largest industrial-scale operation in the world producing ethylene made from 100% renewable raw materials, i.e., sugar-cane. The project was conceived and installed in less than two years based on Braskem’s proprietary technology.
Located at the Triunfo Petrochemical Complex in the state of Rio Grande do Sul, the plant produce 200,000 tons of green ethylene, which will be transformed into an equivalent volume of green plastic.
