Automotive, infrastructure growth drive Lanxess expansion in China

Lanxess will add about 20,000-tonnes/yr of capacity to its thermoplastics compounding site in Wuxi, China, bringing its total capacity to approximately 60,000 tonnes/yr. This third compounding line at the Wuxi site is scheduled to go on stream mid-2011. Lanxess began compounding polyamide (the company's Durethan brand) and polyester (Pocan) there in early 2006 using equipment supplied by Coperion, as originally reported in this article, and doubled plastics compounding capacity there to 40,000 tonnes/yr in 2007.

"This investment will serve the growing demand from Chinese and Asian customers for premium, high-performance engineering plastics, mainly driven by the booming automotive industry," said Axel Heitmann, Lanxess's chairman, in a statement. He said the supplier already is considering further investments in Wuxi.

China is now the world's largest automotive market with unit sales projected to rise by 8% to more than 14 million vehicles in 2010. Lanxess employs about 1000 in Greater China, with sales there of about  €584 million ($784.5 million) in 2009, an increase of 15 % year-on-year. According to Heitmann, the first months of 2010 already have shown strong double-digit growth for sales in China.