German specialty chemicals company Lanxess has started up on schedule a nitrile butadiene rubber (NBR) plant in Nantong, China, as part of its 50:50 joint venture with Taiwan's TSRC Corporation.

The two companies have jointly invested $50 million (approx. €39 million) in the new plant, which has an initial annual capacity of 30,000 metric tons. Some 100 new jobs have been created through the investment.

The two partners set up a joint venture in May 2010 called Lanxess-TSRC (Nantong) Chemical Industrial Company and supplied Chinese customers with NBR produced at Lanxess' La Wantzenau site in France until the start-up of the Nantong plant.

Lanxess is targeting more than €1 billion sales in Greater China (Mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Macao) in 2012. All of the company's 13 business units are represented at 10 sites in Greater China, with close to 1,000 employees in total.

China is the world's biggest and fastest-growing NBR market, with a compound annual growth rate of approximately 10%. Demand is above all being driven by the automotive and construction industries.