Daicel-Evonik (Tokyo / Japan; www.daicel-evonik.com), the 50:50 joint venture between Evonik (Essen / Germany; www.evonik.com) and Daicel Chemical (Tokyo / Japan; www.daicel.com) is building the first compounding line for Evonik’s “Vestakeep” PEEK resins outside of Germany. Output of the plant, located in Himeji / Japan – about 100 km west of Osaka – is licensed solely for the Japanese market. The new facility is to facilitate access to the Japanese market, which so far had been served with compounds from Germany.

Japanese media have surmised that capacity at the Aboshi-ku plant will stand at 500 t/y – an estimate Evonik neither confirmed nor denied. However, it is likely that the line, to be commissioned in the summer of 2011, will have a much lower capacity. Before the economic crisis, Daicel-Evonik had estimated that Japanese demand for polyetheretherketone (PEEK) stood at roughly 300 t, 10% of the estimated global market volume of about 3,000 t.

The virgin PEEK will be delivered from China, where Evonik’s jv with Jilin University (Changchun, Jilin / China) has been running a 500 t/y PEEK plant since 2006.