After stepping back from its Heads of Agreement with Petronas (Kuala Lumpur / Malaysia; www.petronas.com) to invest in a new chemical joint venture in Malaysia – see Plasteurope.com of 23.01.2012 – BASF (Ludwigshafen / Germany; www.basf.com) apparently is shifting some of its envisaged projects to other Asian sites. It has now unveiled plans to form a 50:50 joint venture with Chinese petrochemical giant Sinopec (Beijing; www.sinopec.com). The new company, which will trade as BASF MPCC Co Ltd, intends to build a world-scale plant for the plasticiser precursor isononanol (INA) at Maoming / China, set for start-up in mid-2015.

BASF said the full integration of the new INA plant into an existing petrochemical site at Maoming will allow for a comprehensive system for managing energy as well as minimising water use, emissions and waste. It also “allows for a very competitive feedstock supply,” said Albert Heuser, president Asia Pacific at BASF. The required environmental impact assessment is in progress.

Isononanol is a feedstock for the PVC plasticiser disononyl phthalate (DINP) and the non-phthalate plasticiser DINCH, which BASF markets as “Hexamoll”. Germany’s Evonik (Essen; www.evonik.com), also a major producer of plasticisers, is now planning to invest in an isononanol plant in partnership with Petronas.