Invista’s technology and licensing arm, Invista Performance Technologies, has agreed to supply its PTA technology to Pan-Asia PET Resin (Guangzhou province, China) for a new plant to be built in Saudi Arabia. The deal marks the first technology license for Invista in the Middle East.

Pan-Asia will use the P8 PTA process technology for a 1.25 million t/y plant to be built in Jizan Economic City. The targeted start-up date is for the first quarter of 2021.

In separate news, Fluor has started pre-front-end engineering and design (pre-FEED) and FEED work for Invista’s proposed adiponitrile (ADN) plant in China. The US contractor said it will be the first world-scale ADN facility to be built in more than 35 years.

Located at the Shanghai Chemical Industry Park, the plant will produce around 400,000 t/y of the intermediate, which is used to make nylon polymers, fibers and other specialty materials.

Fluor’s Shanghai office will lead the project work. Construction is scheduled to start in 2020 and start-up is expected to begin by 2022.

Speaking last December, at the 16th China International Polyamide & Intermediates Forum, Kyle Redinger, chairman of Invista (China) Investment and vice president of Invista Intermediates, estimated that China could be the world’s largest market for nylon in the next five years. “We believe it’s important to serve China from China to realize the full potential of the market,” he said.

With an investment in excess of $1 billion in the new ADN plant, he said Invista will have spent more than $2 billion over 10 years in its global nylon 6,6 chain when the China plant is complete.