Braskem has announced that the company’s board of directors has formally approved the final investment decision to proceed with the largest polypropylene (PP) production line in the Americas. Braskem will commit up to USD 675M in investment capital towards the design and construction of the new facility which will be named Delta and will be located next to Braskem’s existing production facilities in La Porte, Texas, U.S.
With the engineering design phase well underway, the new production line will have a manufacturing capacity of 450 kilotons (kt), or the equivalent of approximately 1 billion pounds, per year. Construction will take place on part of the approximate 200 acres of land at Braskem’s current La Porte facility footprint which is located 26 miles from Houston. The new line will represent additional production capacity of homopolymers, random copolymers, impact copolymers, and reactor TPOs, building upon Braskem’s current polypropylene production plant in La Porte which has a production capacity of 354 kt annually and will continue operations.
The construction of Braskem’s new Delta PP production line is expected to begin mid-summer, with the final phase of main construction targeted for the first quarter of 2020.