Lanxess to invest in Brazil facilities

Tyre industry customers will benefit from one of three recently announced Lanxess investments in Brazil. The company reported on October 6 that it will build two new plants at its Porto Feliz site, which is located State of São Paulo. One of these new facilities, run by the Lanxess subsidiary Rhein Chemie, will produce Rhenoshape curing bladders, a product used to give tyres their final shape and properties. The new Porto Feliz plant will also manufacture the rubber additive Rhenogran.

“We will turn our Porto Feliz site into a major specialty chemicals hub with the latest technology for our customers in Brazil and Latin America,” said Lanxess Board of Management chairman Axel C. Heitmann. “Brazil plays a key role in our company’s BRICS-strategy and our business there will contribute to our goal of achieving 1.4 billion EBITDA pre exceptionals in 2015.”

The company plans to invest a total of some 30 million euros in this and other projects in Brazil; the company’s plans also involve another plant in Porto Feliz, which will specialise in the production of the high-tech engineering plastics Durethan and Pocan – used primarily by the automotive industry to make cars lighter and more fuel efficient. The third announced project involves a move to use bio-based raw materials in the production of synthetic rubber. Lanxess is re-engineering parts of its plant in Triunfo, Rio Grande do Sul, in order to produce EPDM rubber (a product commonly used in the automotive industry) from bio-based ethylene. The Brazilian company, Braskem S.A., will supply the ethylene, derived from sugarcane, by pipeline as of November 2011. This, says Lanxess, represents the world’s first production of bio-based EPDM rubber, which will be marketed under the name Keltan Eco.