Braskem lets contract for La Porte polypropylene plant

Braskem America Inc., Philadelphia, a subsidiary of Braskem SA, Sao Paulo, has let a contract to Linde AG to provide lead engineering, procurement, and construction services for its recently announced $675-million plan to build what will become North America’s largest polypropylene (PP) production line on part of the company’s existing manufacturing site in La Porte, Tex., about 26 miles outside of Houston (OGJ Online, June 22, 2017).

As lead EPC contractor, part of Linde’s responsibilities on the project includes implementation of W.R. Grace & Co.’s proprietary Unipol PP process technology at the 450,000-tonne/year PP plant, which is to be named Delta, Braskem and Linde said.

Linde, an approved contractor for Unipol PP technology and industrial plant design, disclosed neither a value of the contract nor additional details regarding its scope of work under the agreement.

This latest contract follows Braskem’s previous contract award to Grace both to license its Unipol PP technology and provide associated services for the Delta PP unit, which has been designed to produce homopolymer, random copolymers, and impact copolymers in a single reactor line, according to an Oct. 31, 2016, release from Grace.

Also equipped to produce reactor thermoplastic polyolefins, the Delta plant, once completed, will more than double Braskem’s 354,000-tpy PP capacity at La Porte to 804,000 tpy while boosting the company’s total US PP production to 2.02 million tpy from a current output of 1.57 million tpy.

With project engineering design already well under way and construction scheduled to begin by midsummer, Braskem said it expects to reach mechanical completion of the project during first-quarter 2020.

Officially approved in June, the Delta PP unit comes as part of Braskem’s global growth strategy to help meet rising demand from customers both in the Americas and abroad by leveraging access to low-cost sources of feedstock from North American shale production as well as existing support infrastructure already in place to accommodate the expansion.

Contact Robert Brelsford at [email protected].