NANTONG, China (Oct. 6, 2010)—Lanxess A.G. has broken ground on a $50 million, 40,000-square-meter nitrile rubber plant in Nantong, a town northwest of Shanghai.
The facility is a joint venture between Lanxess and the Taiwanese firm TSRC Corp., Lanxess said. When it begins production in the first half of 2012, the plant will have an initial annual capacity of 30,000 metric tons of NBR.
According to Lanxess, the state-of-the-art facility is an important step in the company's plans to expand its presence in the Asian nitrile rubber market.
“Driven by the mega-trends of mobility and urbanization in China, the demand for NBR is expected to grow at double-digit rates,” the company said.
Lanxess' announcement of the Chinese NBR plant was concurrent with another company announcement that it projected an earnings increase of about 80 percent over the next five years, to $1.94 billion in 2015 from $1.11 billion in 2010.