MOSCOW (MRC) -- Nippon Shokubai Europe has awarded a detailed engineering, procurement and construction management contract to Jacobs Engineering for the planned expansion of a superabsorbent polymer (SAP) plant and the construction of a new acrylic acid (AA) facility at Nippon's site in Zwijndrecht, Belgium, as per GV.
The EUR350-million project involves increasing SAP production capacity by 100,000 t/y and building a new 100,000-t/y AA unit. Expansion of the SAP plant will raise Nippon's total SAP capacity in Belgium to 160,000 t/y.
Mechanical completion is expected in October 2017 and commercial operations are planned for May 2018.
Upon completion of the project, the Nippon Shokubai group's global SAP capacity will be increased to 710,000 t/y and global AA capacity will be raised to 880,000 t/y. Value of Jacob's contract was not disclosed.
As MRC wrote previously, in summer 2013, Nippon Shokubai received a new "lift of restrictions," allowing the company to resume production at a second acrylic acid unit at its Himeji complex in Japan. Two separate explosions at its Himeji site in September 2012 forced the company to stop production of acrylic acid and superabsorbent polymers and resulted in the suspension of most operations at Himeji.
Nippon Shokubai produces one fifth of the global volume of superabsorbent polymers and it is one of the world's biggest makers of acrylic acid, the main ingredient of a resin called SAP, which is used in diapers
MRC