Lanxess is planning to build a world scale plant to manufacture butyl synthetic rubber in Asia at a cost of ˆ400m. The project would be the largest undertaken by the Bayer spin-off since its formation and be located at one of three possible sites in the region.
Outlining the company’s plans during a visit to Singapore this week, Lanxess chairman Axel Heitmann said that the sites under consideration are in Singapore itself, Map Ta Phut in Thailand and Kuantan in Malaysia.
The plant, mainly driven by demand for butyl rubber from the tyre industry where Asia is increasingly influential, would be on stream by 2010, he said.
Lanxess has already expanded its butyl rubber facility at Zwijndrecht, in Belgium, and is currently conducting a similar exercise at its Sarnia plant, in Canada. The company’s technical rubber products director Gunther Weymans recently told a pre K press conference in Germany that the company “theoretically” requires a new 100,000 tonnes a year plant for butyl rubber every four years.
In addition to its established role in inner tubes and tyre inner liners, butyl also has scope in tyre tread in the future, journalists at the event learned.
