4 April 2007 – Lanxess plans to raise its capacity for ethylene propylene (diene) synthetic rubber to 140,000tpa, from its previously undisclosed total, through a debottlenecking and modernisation exercise. The project will involve such measures as enhanced process control.
“Since optimisation measures taken in the past are already taking effect at our production sites in Marl and Texas, the investments will remain fairly small scale,” notes Robert Gnann, manager of the EPDM business, that is handled by Lanxess’s Technical Rubber Products business unit. “We are confident that we can complete the capacity expansion by the beginning of 2008,” he adds.
Lanxess’s EPDM business was realigned last year with marketing, research, production and control in Europe assigned to Lanxess Buna GmbH in Marl. In the US, Lanxess pooled its EPDM operations in Lanxess Buna LLC, which became a separate legal entity on March 1 this year.
The Bayer spin-off company is the only EPDM maker to use both slurry and solution processes, enabling it to offer a “a unique broad range of crystalline, amorphous, branched and linear EPDM products,” says Gnann.
