BASF to expand butanediol capacity in US

BASF has announced plans to will increase its production capacities for the chemical intermediate 1,4-butanediol (BDO) by 10 percent at its site in Geismar, Louisiana (USA), as of 2016. The company will then have a global capacity of BDO of 6,70,000 metric tonnes per year. Additionally, BASF said that it was looking into further measures to strengthen and to expand its BDO value chain at the Geismar site. To increase the capacities of BDO according to the steadily growing customer demand, BASF continuously implements measures to boost efficiency and improve infrastructure at all its sites.
 
Besides its Geismar site BASF is producing BDO at its sites in Ludwigshafen (Germany), Kuantan (Malaysia), Caojing (China) and Chiba (Japan). In addition, a new BDO site of a joint venture of BASF and the Chinese company Xinjiang Markor is expected to commence operations of 1,00,000 metric tonnes butanediol per year by 2015.
 
“Being the leading producer of BDO globally, we continue to expand our production capacity step wise to support the growth of our customers as a reliable partner,” said Stefan Blank, president, BASF Intermediates division.
 
BDO is used for producing plastics, solvents, electronic chemicals and elastic fibres. Depending on the production technology, the starting materials for the production of conventional BDO are natural gas, coal, butane, butadiene and propylene.