German chemicals giant BASF (Ludwigshafen; www.basf.com) plans to begin construction of a PA and PBT compounding plant in South Korea's Yesan County in the first half of 2014, the company has recently announced. The facility is set to start operations in late 2015, creating more than 30 new jobs.

Initially, the Yesan plant, located in the country's west, will turn out 36,000 t/y of "Ultramid" polyamide and "Ultradur" polybutylene terephthalate, doubling BASF’s South Korean engineering plastics compounding capacity. Commenting on the expansion, BASF Korea's managing director, WooSung Shin, said, “With its excellent infrastructure, Yesan offers a favorable environment for the further expansion of the plant in the future to meet the growing demand of our engineering plastic solutions for the automotive and E&E industry in Korea.”

The company also operates an engineering plastics compounding plant in Ansan / South Korea, where it produces 30,000 t/y of PA and PBT compounds, PIE’s Polyglobe capacity database (www.polyglobe.net) shows. BASF is also currently raising output at its compounding plant in Shanghai / China to 110,000 t/y by 2015 - see Plasteurope.com of 17.01.2011. Taken together, the two capacity upgrades will lift the group’s overall Asian compounding output from 130,000 t/y to 225,000 t/y.