Wacker Starts New Specialty Monomers Unit at Burghausen

Wacker Chemie has started up its new €8 million, 3,800 t/y specialty-monomer plant at Burghausen, Germany. The company said the new plant strengthens its position as the world’s producer of dispersible polymer powders.
The Burghausen facility will produce neodecanoate and vinyl laurate, two key starting materials for specialty dispersible polymer powders, giving the German player sufficient specialty-binder capacity to supply its customers long term.
Wacker said global demand for products is rising amid such world trends as urbanization, renovation and energy efficiency.
Christoph Riemer, head of the polymer-powder business at Wacker Polymers, said the start-up not only gives the company an expanded captive supply of the raw materials for polymer-powder production at Burghausen; the facility also reinforces its leading market and cost positions sustainably.
Wacker’s proprietary acetate-based process used in the new plant makes the company’s production operations “markedly more flexible and self-sufficient compared with conventional processes elsewhere,” added Bors C. Abele, head of acetyls business at Wacker Polymers.