A newly updated and automated production line is up and running at AkzoNobel’s Suzhou site in China, part of a €14 million investment designed to accelerate growth and double the plant’s capacity for marine and protective coatings by 2025.
The company said the launch of its new plant is an important milestone to better serve specialty additives customers in North America, and it complements its existing full-scale plants.
Through a series of projects over the next two years, the expansion is anticipated to increase global production capacity 20-fold and position the company to better meet the sustainability, performance, and cost demands of colorant producers and paint retail stores.
Nouryon will start development of a manufacturing facility at its current site in Ningbo, China, to produce two key intermediates for its organic peroxides business.
BASF will continue to invest in its coatings site in Jiangmen, Guangdong Province, in South China, by constructing a new facility for automotive refinish coatings that will start production in the first half of 2022.