Ineos Technologies’ (London; www.ineos.com) INEOS Oxide business announces that it is planning to build a vinyl acetate monomer (VAM) plant with production capacity of 300,000 metric tons per year (m.t./yr) to support its position as a supplier to a broad range of markets, including the coatings, films and adhesives markets.
The business is completing an engineering study into the construction of the plant that will also support the decision for the plant location, likely to be one of INEOS Oxide’s integrated sites at Saltend, Hull (UK), Koln (Germany) or Antwerp (Belgium).
Each of these locations benefits from pipeline or terminal supply of feedstock ethylene, and low cost logistics for the other key raw material, acetic acid. In addition, the locations are also well positioned to supply the VAM market efficiently.
“Our VAM project represents a further major investment for INEOS and will commit the business to a spend in the hundreds of millions of Euros, whether it is a new build, or a revamp of the former VAM production facility in Saltend, Hull” says Graham Beesley, CEO of INEOS Oxide.
This development dovetails with the recent announcement by INEOS of major ethylene debottlenecks at Grangemouth (UK) and Rafnes (Norway).
Graham Beesley adds, “We are pleased to be re-entering the European VAM market where our upstream strength in ethylene and an array of top-notch strategic locations to choose from will give us a competitive advantage. The market is at present heavily reliant on imports from deep sea locations, and our new capacity is designed to plug the gap and improve supply dependability to our customer base”.