MOSCOW (MRC) -- Solvay Specialty Polymers USA LLC has launched an expansion project at its Augusta manufacturing site to install the first world-scale polyether-etherketone (PEEK) resin production unit in the United States and meet growing demand for Solvay’s KetaSpire and AvaSpire ultra-polymers, as per BusinessWire.
PEEK is a high-temperature, high-strength, and high-purity plastic resin that Solvay uses as a key building block to make its KetaSpire PEEK and AvaSpire PAEK products. These two ultra-polymers are used in a broad range of performance-critical applications such as helping to make airplanes lighter and safer, improving the fuel efficiency of automotive drive trains, and enabling innovations in medical devices.
Roger Kearns, a member of the Solvay Group’s worldwide executive committee, voiced optimism about the company’s expansion in Augusta. "Solvay Specialty Polymers is one of the Group’s growth engines," he said. "Expansion of our KetaSpire and AvaSpire production capabilities plays an important role in Solvay’s continued worldwide leadership in producing innovative high-performance materials that provide sustainable solutions."
Kearns added, "This Augusta expansion is testimony to our researchers, to our plant workers and to the Georgia business environment which welcomes and encourages manufacturing and innovation."
Solvay’s Augusta Plant Manager Alain De Greef echoed Kearns remarks. "Augusta’s workforce is proud of our record of safety, productivity and reliability of supply and we look forward to growing our service to customers and our contributions to Solvay," he said.
The first new structure is expected to rise in mid-summer with completion expected in mid-2016. Solvay currently employs about 200 workers and about 55 contract workers in Augusta.
As MRC informed before, in late 2014, Solvay announced that it had been acquiring Dhaymers, a Brazilian manufacturer of specialty esters, entering the skin care market and expanding its presence in industrial lubricants and mining industries in Latin America.
Solvay S.A. is a Belgian chemical company founded in 1863, with its head office in Neder-Over-Heembeek, Brussels, Belgium. The company has diversified into two major sectors of activity: chemicals and plastics. Solvay supplies over 1500 products across 35 brands of high-performance polymers: fluoropolymers, fluoroelastomers, fluorinated fluids, semi-aromatic polyamides, sulfone polymers, aromatic ultra polymers, high-barrier polymers and cross-linked high-performance compounds.
MRC