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23 March, 2010 SAO PAULO, March 22 (Reuters) – Braskem (BRKM5.SA), Latin America’s largest petrochemicals company, may open a second factory to produce polyethylene from sugar cane-based ethanol, once a first plant starts up around October, a project manager at the firm said on Monday. Braskem expects to become the first commercial-scale producer of polyethylene made from a renewable source when a plant in Brazil begins producing the building block resin used in plastics at the Triunfo plant, said Leonora Novaes, Braskem’s commercial head for green polyethylene. A second plant is likely to follow, if manufacturers show sufficient interest in the plastic, which will have the same characteristics as petroleum-based polyethylene but help reduce greenhouse gasses and meet consumer demand for more environmentally friendly products. A new plant would take about three years to build. The firm is studying possible locations for a second plant, including real estate in the center-south’s sugar cane heartland to have ready access to ethanol, the plastic’s raw material. Ethanol will have to be transported over a long distance to reach the Triunfo plant in Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil’s southernmost state. “Cane (ethanol) brings many advantages. Cane is very efficient at capturing CO2 in the growth process,” Novaes said in a presentation on the product at the opening of the three-day FO Licht Sugar and Ethanol Conference in Sao Paulo. The firm has committed to selling 50,000 tonnes of the green plastic to Toyota (8015.T), a quarter of the 200,000 tonnes the Triunfo plant will produce initially. Novaes said European firms had shown keen interest in the product and Braskem expected to export to the United States. Demand appeared limited on the domestic market so far. “It’s still a niche,” said Novaes, who said the 200,000 tonnes was less than 1 percent of total global polyethylene consumption. (Reporting by Peter Murphy; Writing by Reese Ewing; Editing by Walter Bagley) Source: Reuters Deje un comentario |
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