Demand growth led Shintech Inc. to add more than 900 million pounds of annual PVC resin capacity in Plaquemine, La., in December.
A company spokesman said in an email that Houston-based Shintech now has about 8 billion pounds of annual PVC capacity at plants in Texas and Louisiana. In addition to Plaquemine, Shintech makes PVC in Addis, La., and Freeport, Texas.
The Plaquemine expansion also allowed the firm to create several new jobs. The site "had been running at capacity," the spokesman said, adding that Shintech has no capacity additions planned for 2025.
Shintech filed permits in August with the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality to build an ethane-based ethylene cracker with 1.1 billion pounds of annual capacity in Plaquemine, according to a media report.
Shintech is the world's largest PVC maker. The firm is a unit of Shin-Etsu Chemical Co. Ltd. Of Tokyo. Shintech entered U.S. PVC production in 1974 in Freeport.