Solvay set to build large-scale alkoxylation plant in Singapore

Solvay has announced that it will build a large-scale alkoxylation facility in Singapore, which is expected to start operations by 2015 and will serve the fast-growing Asian market in home & personal care, coatings, industrial, agrochemicals and oil & gas.
The facility will be connected to Shell’s new High Purity Ethylene Oxide (HPEO) unit located in the integrated petrochemical hub of Jurong Island. Through the alkoxylation process, key monomers are produced that serve downstream surfactant development and manufacturing. The investment comes after Solvay recently announced that it would build a speciality surfactant plant near Berlin, Germany, serving the Central and Eastern European markets.
The company is already Asia’s largest speciality surfactant manufacturer with 11 production sites and two R&D centres in Singapore and Shanghai.
"Our new facility will enable us to develop our speciality surfactant offer in Asia and use Singapore as a hub to provide highly competitive and innovative intermediates to other Novecare sites in Asia, as well as penetrating further into key Southeast Asia markets such as Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand,” said Pierre-Franck Valentin, VP and GM of Solvay Novecare in Asia Pacific.