DowDuPont starts up new Texas PE and ethylene units

DowDuPont Inc. has announced the start-up of its new integrated world-scale ethylene production facility and its new Elite enhanced polyethylene (PE) production facility, both in Freeport, Texas.

The units will continue to ramp up through the third quarter and are expected to reach full rates in the fourth quarter of 2017.

DowDuPont’s new ethylene production facility.

The new unit will have annual production of almost 900 million lbs of Elite-brand enhanced PE and more than 3 billion pounds of new ethylene. More than 1 billion lbs of ethylene capacity are expected to be added to that unit, which officials said will make it the world’s single largest ethylene site.

“These facilities are an integral part of Dow’s investments on the US Gulf Coast to meet increasing consumer-led demand in our core market verticals of packaging, infrastructure and consumer care, and will enable our next level of earnings and cash flow growth,” said Andrew Liveris, executive chairman of DowDuPont.

In addition to supporting Dow’s near-term capacity additions, the ethylene facility will also support further planned debottlenecks to unlock additional polyethylene capacity as well as a new world-scale polyethylene unit as part of the Company’s comprehensive growth investments. According to Dow, the remaining derivative assets to come online in the U.S. Gulf Coast include:

• New specialty low density polyethylene (capacity: 350,000 tons per year) for industrial and supply chain packaging applications, expected to startup later this year.
• Next generation Nordel metallocene EPDM (capacity: 200,000 tons per year) to deliver solutions for higher-margin applications for infrastructure and consumer durables end-markets, expected to startup in early 2018.
• Bi-modal gas phase de-bottleneck (125,000 tons per year) to enable more offerings for high-performance pipe and fitting applications, as well as the cap and closure market, to follow later in 2018.
• High melt index specialty and conventional polyolefin elastomers (capacity: 320,000 tons per year) for high-performance flexible packaging end-markets, expected to come online in late 2018.
• World-scale polyethylene unit based on Dow’s proprietary solution process technology (capacity: 600,000 tons per year) to meet demand in food and specialty packaging, expected to come online by 2022.