Ravago Plastics (Poederstraat 30, B-2370 Arendonk), by its own account one of the world's largest plastics recycling, compounding and trading companies, is building a 70,000 t/y compounding and recycling plant at "Value Park", the 80-hectare industrial park set up by Dow Chemical (Bachtobelstr. 3, CH-8810 Horgen) on cleared space at Buna Sow LeunaOlefinverbundGmbH (BSL, D-06258 Schkopau) in eastern Germany. The DEM 70m plant, set to go onstream at the end of 1998, will employ 70. The Belgian group is a long-time customer of Dow through its distribution offshoot, Resinex. With plants and sales offices in 60 countries, it employs 1,500, has annual sales of over USD 650m and a material flow of 550,000 t/y.

Ravago leads the list of investors in the downstream plastics processing sector at Schkopau. Kurotec GmbH (HQ: Am Bullenhof 25, D-21680 Stade), another long-time Dow customer, plans a DEM 4m production facility for GRP pipes using the US group's epoxy vinyl ester resins. It will employ 40. Dow also hopes to attract other plastics converters to the site, where investors can benefit from German state investment aid and proximity to customers in central and eastern Europe. As Ravago managing director Theo Roussis put it, "the location near Leipzig opens up new business opportunities for us to expand into the growing eastern European market." Farther upstream, EVC International is investing in PVC production at Schkopau and Ashland Chemical plans to take over UP resins production.