Emerald Kalama Chemical, a business group of Emerald Performance Materials (Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio / USA; www.emeraldmaterials.com), said it has completed the first approval stage for the addition of a second benzoic acid purification and finishing process at its facility in Rotterdam / The Netherlands. Final approval for construction is expected in the third quarter of this year, with the new addition planned to go on stream in Q4 2016. The latest expansion will add capacity to process an additional 100,000 t/y of high purity material and supporting output from the company’s two reactor trains.

The US company said the project is its seventh multi-million-dollar investment in the past several years at the Dutch site acquired from DSM (Sittard / The Netherlands; www.dsm.com) in 2010. A new “K-Flex” non-phthalate plasticiser and coalescents facility was opened in 2012 – see Plasteurope.com of 25.09.2012. Emerald Kalama said the added purification and finishing capacity will be used captively to support production of K-Flex products but also to meet growing demand from the open market for its high purity “Kalama” and “Purox” brands of benzoic acid flakes, sodium benzoate granules and liquid benzoic acid.