Ticona to strengthen presence in Asia

17 Apr '08

3 min read

Ticona, the engineering polymers business of Celanese Corporation, is pinning high hopes on growth in Asia. The company is planning a series of new investments to further strengthen its existing presence in the region over the next few years. In so doing, it intends to enhance its position as a global supplier of high-performance plastics and at the same time benefit from the strong economic growth in Asian countries.

“The Asian market is recording double-digit growth rates at present,” explained Lyndon Cole, president of Ticona, at the end of June in Frankfurt. “Our strategy is to take control of our destiny in the region and to capture a leading share of this growth directly with an enhanced local product and service offering to support our customer's globalization efforts and development requirements. Over the next few years, we will add local production facilities for our core products and commercial, technical and application development resources.”

Commitment to long-term involvement in China
The main pillar of Ticona's Asian growth strategy will be China. Back in mid-May, Ticona celebrated the groundbreaking ceremony for two new production plants in Nanjing – one for GUR UHMWPE and the other for Celstran LFT. Both plants are scheduled to come on stream in 2008. As a result, the company's global capacity for GUR will increase to over 90,000 tonnes per year and capacity for Celstran to more than 35,000 tonnes. In February this year Ticona also announced that plans are being developed for quickly installing local compounding, and Vectra LCP and Hostaform POM production in the region within the next three to five years.

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