PA 6.6 behemoth Invista (Wichita, Kansas / USA; www.invista.com) is reviving plans to build a world-scale plant for adiponitrile (ADN) in China. The company said it has begun engineering work for a facility that would produce “at minimum” 300,000 t/y of the key polyamide feedstock. Investment costs of more than USD 1 bn are projected, with construction due to begin in 2020 and production in 2023.

The US company, world’s largest producer of PA 6.6, owns the “nylon” trademark and a number of production facilities taken over from DuPont (Wilmington, Delaware / USA; www.dupont.com), inventor of the PA grade. Bill Greenfield, president of Invista Intermediates, said he is pleased with the feedback received in the market, and is confident of reaching agreements with “selected partners” for the project over the next few months. In the past five years, Invista has invested more than USD 600m in China to support the PA 6.6 market, Greenfield said.

While a location for the new line – which would use Invista’s technology – has not been disclosed, the most likely location would seem to be the Shanghai Chemical Industry Park (SCIP), where the company four years ago said it would build a 300,000 t/y facility, along with plants for 215,000 t/y of hexamethylenediamine (HMD) and 150,000 t/y of PA 6.6. ADN is the direct precursor for HMD. The latter two started up in 2016 – see Plasteurope.com of 08.11.2016 – but the ADN unit was put on ice for undisclosed reasons. After the explosion at Chinese ADN and HMD producer Shandong Runxing Chemical in 2015, Invista may have wanted to analyse its own process for weaknesses – see Plasteurope.com of 06.04.2018.

The ADN market is currently tight, and the last new world-scale plant was built more than 35 years ago, stressed Kyle Redinger, vice president of Invista Intermediates, Asia Pacific. The vast majority of capacity for the key PA 6.6 feedstock is concentrated in the US, where Invista dominates, operating two plants to the one operated by Ascend Performance Materials. European production is also dominated by Invista, which is a partner with Solvay in the joint venture Butachimie, based in France. EU regulatory authorities are closely eyeing the latter while studying plans by BASF to buy the Belgian company’s integrated PA business – see Plasteurope.com of 27.06.2018.