BP announced that it plans to invest over USD 200M to upgrade its purified terephthalic acid (PTA) plants at Cooper River, South Carolina and Geel, Belgium. The investments will position these assets amongst the most efficient PTA manufacturing facilities in the world.
“This allows us to apply our latest proprietary technology and process know-how to existing assets, significantly improving their cost competitiveness and reducing their environmental footprint”, said Luis Sierra, president, BP Aromatics – Americas, Europe and Middle East. “It enables Cooper River and Geel to remain the leading PTA manufacturing complexes in the Americas and Europe respectively.”
By applying the latest PTA technology to these world-scale production facilities, BP expects to greatly improve feedstock and energy efficiency, reducing both variable and fixed cost and greenhouse gas emissions. PTA is the raw material used to make polyester. The BP Cooper River site is the largest PTA producer in the Americas and BP Geel is the largest in Europe.
Cooper River’s PTA1 unit, one of two units at the facility, is expected to be upgraded by mid-2016. Geel’s PTA3 unit is expected to be upgraded by the end of 2015 with PTA2 following in 2016.
