Simultaneous announcements on 11 October by Ticona / DSM and Bayer/DuPont have cast a different light on the European PBT market. The big surprise for most observers is that Bayer has changed horses in midstream, saying that a linkup with DuPont is a better option than the deal struck with Ticona and DSM last June. At that time, Bayer agreed to join the existing partners in conducting a feasibility study for a European plant. With Bayer´s addition, capacity of the proposed facility was lifted to 70,000 t/y from the 40-60,000 t/y originally foreseen.

With Bayer out, Ticona and DSM have widened their feasibility study into a “global” study of the PBT market. Foremost goal, however, will be to build a plant in Europe by 2003. A possible location could be the Oberhausen, Germany, site of Ticona parent Celanese, where as Ticona ceo Edward Munoz recently remarked, there is sufficient space. Ticona itself has no PBT polymerisation in Europe. The group also is eager to build a PBT plant in Asia, but a once mulled collaboration with Polyplastics, a 45:55 joint venture with Japan´s Daicel, is out. Polyplastics earlier this year agreed to form a PBT jv, WinTech Polymer Ltd., with Teijin.

The DuPont/Bayer letter of intent calls for an 80,000 t/y PBT polymerisation plant, also to go onstream in 2003, at an existing Bayer or DuPont site in Europe. As in the BASF- GE Plastics arrangement at Schwarzheide in eastern Germany, each partner would compound and market the polymer separately. Citing growth rates for PBT of 7-9%, “one of the highest for technical polymers,” Bayer has been keen to expand its own business, which is relatively small compared to its other technical polymers capacities. Current world PBT capacity is estimated at 400,000 t/y, around a quarter of this in Europe.