06-03-2012

Chemtura holds groundbreaking ceremony for new, multipurpose manufacturing site in China

Chemtura Corporation, a leading global specialty chemicals company based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, today held a groundbreaking ceremony for its new, multipurpose manufacturing facility in the Nantong Economic and Technological Development Area to support Chemtura’s growth strategy in China and the greater Asia-Pacific region.
 
The Nantong facility, Jiangsu Province, first announced in June 2011, will be operational within the next two years with four production units  supporting Chemtura’s Industrial Performance Products segment’s Petroleum Additives and Urethanes businesses, with the first production unit expected to be operational in the fourth quarter of 2013. There also are plans to manufacture additional products in future phases.
 
As previously disclosed, Chemtura’s goal, among other initiatives, is to create value for customers and other stakeholders by improving support of its business growth with increased manufacturing capacity in rapidly growing regions. This facility will be Chemtura’s largest single investment since its formation in 2005 and the centerpiece site for manufacturing in Asia-Pacific, and specifically in China. The investment is being made over a three-year period.
 

“This project is a huge step forward and a statement to our customers and investors that we are truly committed to our growth strategy in the world’s fast growing regions. We are going to make a broad array of our leading-edge products at Nantong in order to be closer to our customers, to shorten the timeframe for new product development and commercialization in the region, as well as to shorten the supply chain for these growing markets,” said Craig A. Rogerson, Chemtura’s chairman, president, and chief executive officer.

The state-of-the-art Nantong facility will include production lines,  administrative and maintenance buildings, utilities, a centralized control room, and quality control labs. This planned investment will support the growth of our Industrial Performance Products segment’s Petroleum Additives and Urethanes businesses. The following describes the products that will come online during the first two years of development, with further expansion planned over the remainder of the three-year project period.
 
* The Petroleum Additives business requires local manufacturing and storage capabilities for some of its product lines in order to meet customer demand. These include synthetic finished fluids (refrigeration lubricants, air compressor lubricants and gear oils), and calcium sulfonate grease. Local manufacturing capacity for synthetic lubricants is required for the business to respond to the  market’s demand for shorter lead times. Installation of grease capacity in China will provide Chemtura’s customers with a more secure global supply capability, and will place capacity in the region with the highest growth rate.

* Growth in the Urethanes business, including its low-free (LF) prepolymer urethanes, is driven by the commercialization of Chemtura’s high-performance, greener Adiprene® Duracast™ product line coupled  with increasing global and regional demand for its LF products. Additional LF prepolymer manufacturing capacity in China will allow Chemtura to continue to grow its most advanced product lines and  places capacity in a region with strong demand growth, while preserving existing capacity elsewhere to continue supplying customers  in other regions.

In addition to the planned development of local manufacturing capacity,  Chemtura plans to continue to build global scale through investing in sales representation, technical development centers, joint ventures and bolt-on acquisitions, further empowering its regional teams to serve their growing customer base with robust service functions and technical support capabilities.