Italian engineering group Maire Tecnimont (Milan; www.mairetecnimont.com) has announced plans to develop a production plant for biodegradable resins in Tatarstan with local producer TAIF (Nizhnekamsk; http://en.taif.ru/).

The Italian company said its subsidiaries NextChem (Rome; www.nextchem.it) and project developer MET Development have signed a memorandum of understanding to jointly assess and evaluate the biopolymer plant opportunity with TAIF to establish the fundamentals of the development collaboration. TAIF is said to be the largest industrial investment company in Tatarstan and works in oil and gas, chemistry, petrochemistry and energy.

Pierroberto Folgiero, Maire Tecnimont group and NextChem CEO, said, “Our Group can boast a very long-term, mutually beneficial cooperation with TAIF, which dates back to the 1970s. Today, we are enthusiastic to put our technological and entrepreneurial mindset at the service of such a prominent partner, to support the industrialisation of the green economy in Tatarstan.”

Maire Tecnimont has announced that its subsidiary NextChem has been awarded a contract to build a 100,000 t/y PLA plant in Grandpuits / France for Total Corbion PLA (Gorinchem / The Netherlands; www.total-corbion.com), the joint venture between Total (Paris / France; www.total.com) and Corbion (Gorinchem; www.corbion.com). The plant, due to be operational in 2024, is said to be the first of its kind in Europe and part of Total’s transformation of the Grandpuits facility into a zero-crude platform (see Plasteurope.com of 30.09.2020).