New polycarbonate plant makes Bayer top producer

Bayer AG (Leverkusen, Germany) plans to spend $860 million to become the world's largest polycarbonate producer within the next five years.

"We plan to double our Makrolon polycarbonate resin capacities from their present level of 650,000 mt/yr to something approaching 1.3 million mt/yr by 2005," says Bayer Plastics Business Group GM Hagen Noerenberg.

The company will increase capacity at four of its five facilities:

• Baytown, TX. Bayer will boost NAFTA region capacity to 350,000 mt/yr by 2005.
• Map Ta Phut, Thailand. Bayer plans a two-stage expansion by 2005, lifting capacity to 350,000 mt/yr, from 50,000 mt/yr today.
• Shanghai, China. Bayer plans to open a 50,000 mt/yr polycarbonate plant in Caojing Chemical Park in 2003. It will double the size of the facility to 100,000 mt/yr by the end of 2004.
• Antwerp, Belgium. Bayer started its new melt process carbonate plant in August 2000. The unit now produces 40,000 mt/yr of high-clarity polycarbonate in all Makrolon viscosity grades.

Polycarbonate is a versatile engineering plastic that combines transparency, impact resistance, strength, and use temperatures well above 200 F with simple, economical processing.

It finds broad use in lighting and optical applications, household and consumer goods, traffic and transport, and medical equipment. It is also used for CD and DVD optical storage media, and break-resistant glazing for architectural glass.

Bayer's key competitors are GE Plastics and Dow Chemical Co.

Edited by Alan S. Brown
Managing Editor, Chemical Online
abrown@vertical.net

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