PAEK Producers Past, Present and Future

In 1993 the ICI Victrex PEEK business was sold to a management buyout and subsequently Victrex pic was floated on the London Stock Exchange as an independent company. Victrex currently has 4250 tonnes capacity and is the leading supplier of PAEK. It produces nucleophilic PEEK, PEK ( PEEK HT ) and, since May 2009, PEKEKK ( Victrex ST ). Sales in 2008 were 2625 tonnes of resin having grown by around 40% in the previous four years. In value terms sales were 141 million with a profit before tax of 55 million. 

In the 1980s and early 1990s Hoechst manufactured nucleophilic PEEKK (Hostatec) and BASF produced electrophilic PEKEKK (Ultrapek). Both failed to achieve substantial sales and were withdrawn from the market. 

PEKK was originally developed by DuPont. It is now manufactured by Rallis in India which has 100 t of capacity and supplies material 

In 2005 Degnssa (now Evonik) formed a joint venture with Jilin University (Jida Degussa) in China to produce PEEK (Vestakeep) and subsequently acquired the old Hoechst PEEKK technology. Jilin had produced PEEK in China since 1980 to supply military and nuclear applications at a time when export of PEEK from the west was banned. Evonik has 1000 tpa capacity in China. 

Gharda Chemicals in India produced PEEK using a novel electrophilic process and also polyether sulfones by rather more conventional routes. This business was acquired by Solvay in 2005 and subsequently Solvay has built a 500 t (expandable to 1000 t) nucleophilic PEEK (Ketaspire) plant at the Gharda site in India. 

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