The company’s Chinese arm plans to invest $ 230 million in two production lines at the Shanghai site, thereby more than doubling its output capability from currently 190,000 t/y to 400,000 t/y. Some 40,000 t/y of new capacity was added in late 2020. Work on the massive expansion is due to begin at the beginning of 2022, with start-up planned for spring 2024.

Invista’s latest investment in the chemical park goes hand-in-hand with an upstream project that calls for adding 400,000 t/ of adiponitrile (ADN) capability) by the beginning of 2021. This new facility will feed the site’s 215,000 t/y production of nylon intermediate hexamethylenediamine (HMD).

Supporting the buildup, Invista said, is the projected compounded annual growth rate of 4% in Chinese demand for PA 6.6 – about twice that forecast for the market globally. The company noted also that the enhanced capacity will allow it to more quickly respond to growing demand in its Asian main markets of engineering plastics and apparel.

The world’s largest producer of polyamide, which owns the rights to the Nylon trademark, calculates additionally that Chinese demand for PA products will account for more than half the total production and consumption n in the Asia-Pacific region altogether.

Author: Dede Williams, Freelance Journalist