The Bayer group (HQ: D-51368 Leverkusen) will spend DEM 250m on a scheme to increase worldwide capacity for ABS by 100,000 t/y to more than 850,000 t/y up to 2002 while concentrating production at fewer locations. The 100,000 t/y plant at Antwerp and the 60,000 t/y unit at Muscatine, Iowa /US are set to close. These had been operated by Monsanto for Bayer since it sold its business to the Leverkusen group in 1996.

Now one of the world's top three ABS producers, in company with GE Plastics (GEP, European HQ: PO Box 117, NL-AC Bergen op Zoom) and Taiwan's Chi Mei, Bayer hopes a broader, more efficient production set-up will help it to grow faster than the market. Sales are targeted to reach more than DEM 2bn when the new capacity is in place. And "despite enormous cost and price pressure" increase earnings "noticeably," said Gottfried Zaby, general manager of the plastics business group, ABS currently is in loss.

The new capacity will be spread among Bayer's worldwide sites. US production is to be concentrated at Addyston, Ohio, the former Monsanto Port Plastics site, Antwerp's output split among Dormagen (Germany) Tarragona (Spain) and Filago (Italy). Bayer produces 430,000 t/y of ABS in Europe, 250,000 t/y in the US. By the year 2000, output in Brazil is scheduled to rise to 50,000 t/y, capacities in Thailand and India to 100,000 t/y.