Air Products Invests In China Gas Plants

US industrial gases producer Air Products is building six industrial gas plants and a pipeline network in China to supply nitrogen, oxygen and other bulk gases to the growing electronics industry in the People’s Republic.

The company said it has secured multiple long-term supply contracts with semiconductor and flat panel display manufacturers in major electronics clusters and industrial parks in China's key economic regions, including the Yangtze River Delta in Eastern China, Pearl River Delta in Southern China and Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region in Northern China.

Contracts inked over the past year include what Air Products  describes as “landmark projects,” including a new memory fab in the Fujian (Jinjiang) Integrated Circuit Industrial Park in Fujian Province, Southern China, and a new foundry in the Pukou Economic Development Zone (PKEDZ) in Eastern China.

Many international companies are setting up shop in the Pukou zone, as the gases producer notes. The high tech park located only 35 km from the Nanjing Chemical Industry Park (NCIP), where many multinational companies are based, will be home to advanced manufacturing businesses.  Air Products said it already supplies customers in the NCIP and across Nanjing through pipelines and various other supply modes.

Apart from the electronics industry, the US company said it is supplying the TFT-LCD (thin-film transistor liquid crystal display) fab located in the Banan Jieshi IT Industrial Park in Chongqing City, Western China, which it said is the highest-generation, most advanced and most efficient facility of its type in the country.

Air Products said the new Chinese projects are expected to be accretive to earnings and cash flow over the next few years.