HOUSTON — May 11, 2011 — The M&G Group, the largest producer of PET for packaging applications
in the Americas and the technological leader in that market, announced today that it will build a
next generation technology PET plant in the United States, co-located and fully integrated with a
new PTA plant at the same site. Approximately 250 jobs will be created at the plants, with an
additional 700 indirect positions and 3,000 jobs during construction.
PET, or polyethylene terephthalate, is a thermoplastic polymer resin used in the production
of packaging for such products as soft drinks, pharmaceuticals, fresh and frozen foods and personal
care products. PTA, purified terephthalic acid, is the primary raw material used in the production
of PET.
The new PET single line plant will have a capacity of 1,000 kt/year (or approximately 2.2
billion lbs/year) and will employ, on a larger scale, the same technology (including M&G’s
revolutionary EasyUpT™ SSP technology) as M&G’s single reactor Suape (Brazil) PET plant which
came on stream in Q1 2007 and has since been successfully debottlenecked to 650 kt/year.
The PTA unit will have a capacity of 1,200 kt/year (or approximately 2.6 billion lbs/year),
and will provide full upstream integration for all of M&G’s U.S. PET capacity. Two
technologies, among the very few capable of delivering the required size, are at the final
evaluation stage for this PTA plant, which will be the largest in the Americas and among the
largest in the world.
The new plants will be located in the Southern U.S. and final candidates for selection have
been reduced to sites in Texas, Mississippi and Louisiana. A final selection of the location and of
the PTA technology is expected to be announced by the end of June and construction time for both
plants is estimated to be 30 months.
“The technological breakthrough of scaling up M&G’s proprietary technology to a one
million metric ton single reactor has been available to us since the year 2007 when our investment
plans were delayed by the financial crisis,” said Marco Ghisolfi, CEO of M&G’s Polymers
Business Unit. “As a result of demand growth fully recovering in 2010 and of several plants in
North America having closed or been sold over the past few years, the industry supply/demand
balance has now been restored, creating room in the market for our new plant. We continue to
believe that North American assets must be competitive in the global environment so we have decided
to follow through with our original plan of leveraging our unique proprietary PET technology and to
enhance the plan implementation with the additional benefits of efficient upstream integration now
being offered by the latest generation PTA technologies.
“Our PET technology, which allows us to build plants over four times larger than those
achievable with commercially available technologies, can today be combined with PTA plants with
matching sizes and efficiency. This formidable combination, and the flexibility of its assets, will
enable M&G to cost effectively service future industry growth and to have by far the most
competitive cost base not only in the Americas but globally.”
Posted on May 27, 2011
Source: M&G Group
