Ascend Performance Materials (Houston, Texas / USA; www.ascendmaterials.com) has finalised an agreement with the US state of Alabama for an expansion of ADN production capacity at its site in Decatur, Alabama – see Plasteurope.com of 27.05.2019. The USD 175m project is expected to create 150 skilled jobs during construction and 10 manufacturing roles by completion. Ascend currently employs more than 400 people in Alabama. Up to 2022, Ascend is planning to add a total of 220,000 t/y of capacity.

US contractor MasTec Power (Centennial, Colorado; www.mastecpower.com) has been selected for engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) of the project. Construction is planned to begin in Q2 2020 and expected to end in late 2021.

Ascend’s Decatur facility is one of only four large-scale production plants for ADN, a precursor for polyamide 6.6. ADN is produced at a sole site in Europe by Butachimie (Chalampé / France; www.butachimie.eu). The joint venture of Invista (Wichita, Kansas / USA; www.invista.com) and Solvay (Brussels / Belgium; www.solvay.com) recently restarted its Chalampé facility after a maintenance turnaround and capacity upgrade – see Plasteurope.com of 03.01.2020.