Capacity building partnerships

Since January 2010, Bioamber, a joint venture between US-based Diversified Natural Products Inc. and Green Technology Agroindustrie Recherches et Developpements has been producing biobased succinic acid in France, with an initial capacity of 2,000 metric tonnes, and is planning the building of a new facility in Canada of 30,000 tonnes/year capacity in partnership with Mitsui [107]. 

Western multinationals committed to remaining leaders in the petrochemical industry have to build or participate in local capacity in order to capture a greater share of Chinese demand and tap the Middle East s feedstock resources. Players could also consider occupying positions where higher-level skills are needed. Building win-win partnerships with local players is key. 

Together with China Petroleum Chemical Corp. (Sinopec) in a 50-50 partnership, BASF planned to build its first Verbund project in East Asia - an integrated petrochemical site (IPS) on 220 hectares of land. The core of the project was an ethylene cracker with a capacity of 600,000 tons per year. Nine new plants downstream would be supplied by the cracker, producing 1.7 million metric tons of chemical products for local consumption, including ethylene, aromatics, poly-ethylenes, ethylene oxide and ethylene glycols, acrylic acid, acrylates, oxo alcohols, formic acid, propionic acid, methylamine, and dimethylformamide. 

Whitney Corp., New York, entered into a partnership with the Government of Israel to develop the process and the special equipment needed for it. As a result of pilot experiments, it was decided to build a moderately sized plant for the Red Sea port of Eilat, where the only water resources are sea water or highly brackish ground water, the latter in limited quantities. This plant is to have a total capacity of 250,000 gallons of fresh water per day and is to consist of four units, the first of which has been completed. 

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