Formosa Plastics Corporation, U.S.A. announced to invest more than $1.7 billion at its Point Comfort, Texas site, USA, in new Olefins and Low Density Polyethylene (LDPE) facility. This will be the third major expansion at the Point Comfort site and will consist of a:
- New, grass-roots 800,000 MT/Y olefins cracker
- Associated 600,000 MT/Y propane dehydrogenation (PDH) unit
- New 300,000 MT/Y low density polyethylene (LDPE) resin plant.
At the end, Formosa Plastics will benefit from 2.42 million t/y of ethylene and 1.24 million t/y of propylene
The new olefins cracker will take advantage of the increasingly reliable and low-cost domestic natural gas and supply feedstock both to existing production units and the new LDPE unit. The PDH unit will produce additional propylene, increasing operational flexibility. The addition of the country’s newest LDPE resin plant will complement the company’s existing product lines of polyethylene (PE), polypropylene (PP), polyvinyl chloride (PVC) and specialty PVC.
“This is a tremendous vote of confidence in the U.S. economy, the State of Texas and the Gulf Coast region’s workforce.” said site Vice President/General Manager Randy Smith.
The completion and start-up of the project is due in 2016.
