CHICAGO — Polypropylene processors will be able to make an upstream investment in resin by buying equity in Rextac LLC, a materials firm based in Odessa, Texas.
“We've been approaching big polypropylene end users that want to capture a feedstock advantage,” president Nick Fowler said Oct. 1 at the 2014 Global Plastics Summit in Chicago.
Rextac is in the process of reopening a dormant 600 million-pound capacity PP line at its Odessa site, which previously had been operated by Flint Hills Resources. Fowler and several partners bought the site from Flint Hills in 2009.
Rextac currently makes specialty amorphous polyalphaolefin (APAO) resin at the site. The firm also has plans to build a new PP line there, as well as a propane dehydrogenation (PDH) unit with almost 900 million pounds of annual capacity to make propylene monomer feedstock.
Fowler said that Rextac can lower its operating costs and capital expenditures by using locally sourced feedstocks and existing assets at the site.
“We're still raising money,” he explained. “To do this, you need persistence and very thick skin.”