GEEL, BELGIUM (Nov. 1, 9:25 a.m. ET) — Indian polyester producer JBF Industries is to launch Europe’s biggest PET plant to date, a facility with 432,000 metric ton per year nominal output which it will build in Geel, Belgium with completion set for 2014.
Mumbai-based JBF plans to manufacture high quality PET for bottles and packaging applications using purified terephthalic acid (PTA) feedstock supplied by the company BP Chembel from its adjacent site in Geel.
The new PET plant will be constructed by the German engineering company Uhde Inventa-Fischer. The facility will make use of the engineering firm’s state-of-the-art, energy-efficient MTR Melt-to-Resin technology in producing quality PET pellets.
The integration of a 54,000 metric ton per year Flakes-to-Resin (FTR) recycling line will allow the new plant to replace up to 25 percent of the total raw material PTA required for its production with recycled material.
Detailed engineering for the JBF Geel project will be handled jointly by Uhde Inventa-Fischer and a sister company Uhde India Private Ltd.
Elsewhere, JBF group offshoot JBF RAK operates a 400,000 metric ton per year packaging grade PET resin plant in the Emirate of Ras Al Kaimah in the UAE in association with the emirate’s investment authority. It also runs a three line 72,000 metric ton per year biaxially oriented PET films unit at the site. The 161 million euro PET project went on stream in January 2007.
JFB group is planning, through a subsidiary, to launch a 90,000 metric ton per year polyester films plant in Bahrain in June next year and has decided to set up a 1.25 million metric ton per year PTA operation in Mangalore, India.
