Indorama Ventures PCL, Thailand, plans to expand its annual U.S. polyethylene terephthalate (PET) production capacity by 540,000 metric tons at an undisclosed brownfield location. The expansion is expected to be completed in the fourth quarter of 2015 and will bring the company's total North American PET capacity to 2.1 million metric tons per year.

Indorama's PET, polyester and monoethylene glycol businesses in North America represent some 40 percent of its $5.1 billion in consolidated sales for the first nine months of 2012.

The company also will start up a 200,000-metric tons-per-year PET plant in the Netherlands in the fourth quarter of 2012. Other planned developments include a purified terephthalic acid (PTA) debottleneck to 600,000 metric tons at its Netherlands site by 2015, a PTA debottleneck of its site in Poland, and the startup of a 300,000-metric-ton flagship polyester plant in Indonesia in 2013.

November/December 2012