With the inauguration of two world-scale production lines, Covestro has doubled production capacity for the engineering plastic polycarbonate from 200,000 to 400,000 t/y at its site in Shanghai Chemical Industry Park in China. The former Bayer MaterialScience is world’s largest producer. The new lines are the last building block of the company’s multi-year, €3 billion, capital spending scheme for Shanghai. Earlier this year, another new world-scale plant for 50,000 t/y of HDI started up at the site.  Its output is earmarked for the coatings and adhesives sector.

Speaking at the inauguration ceremony, Michelle Jou, head of Covestro’s polycarbonates business segment, said the new capacity will meet demand from important industries such as electronics, healthcare and automotive in China and in Asia generally. Separately, Covestro said the force majeure announced recently for deliveries of polyurethane feedstocks MDI and TDI from its European production facilities will be extended until the week of December 11, as its production plants are still running at reduced capacity following an unforeseen production outage at a supplier of nitric acid in the first week of October.

 “Despite the extent of this issue, we in total do not expect a negative impact on our declared business targets for 2016,” said CEO Patrick Thomas.