LyondellBasell has signed a Memorandum of Understanding with China's Bora Enterprise Group to jointly own and operate a giant cracker and plastics complex in northeast China.

The two companies will form a 50:50 joint company based at Panjin China to manage the 1.1 million t/y cracker and downstream production facilities for 800,000 t/y of PE, 600,000 t/y of PP and 350,000 t/y of styrene. 

All of the plants would employ processes owned by LYB, which is the world’s biggest licensor of polyolefins technology, a position resulting from a long string of mergers and acquisitions spanning several decades.

The PE plant would use the group’s Hostalen ACP process and the PP plant its Spheripol and Spherizone technologies. The Rotterdam-headquartered polylefins giant managed from Houston, Texas, USA would have responsibility for marketing the polyolefin products.

No start-up date has been given for any of the units, which reports say could form the base for an investment worth as much as $12 billion, if all ten projected phases were to be realized.

“China is the largest, fastest growing market in the world for our core products,” said Bob Patel, CEO of LyondellBasell. “The formation of this jv with a well-respected Chinese company allows us to increase our flexibility to produce these products closer to the customer,” he said, adding that it will also broaden the group’s Chinese base.

LyondellBasell, which claims to be the world’s largest PP compounder, is already represented in the People’s Republic with three compounding facilities for the commodity thermoplastic. Altogether, the three sites at Guangzhou, Suzhou and Dalian have capacity to compound 130,000 t/y of product. All three are strategically located to supply China’s growing automotive market.