Mossi & Ghisolfi (M&G, Tortona / Italy; www.gruppomg.com) has announced plans to build a 1m t/y PET production plant in the US Gulf Coast region. The single line plant will be based on M&G’s “EasyUp” solid-state polymerisation (SSP) technology, and will be fully integrated with a new 1.2m t/y PTA facility at the same site. M&G said the project will be located in Texas, Mississippi or Louisiana, and it estimates construction time for both the PET and PTA plants at 30 months. The company expects to announce the project’s location by the end of June.

Marco Ghisolfi, CEO of M&G's polymers business, said the company was forced to delay its investment plans because of the financial crisis. "As a result of demand growth fully recovering in 2010 and of several plants in North America having closed or been sold over the past few years, the industry supply/demand balance has now been restored, creating room in the market for our new plant,” he stated.

Approximately 250 jobs will be created at the plants, with an additional 700 indirect positions and 3,000 jobs during construction, M&G said. The company noted that its EasyUp SSP technology is already used at its PET plant in Suape, Pernambuco / Brazil, which started up in 2007 and has since been debottlenecked to 650,000 t/y.