DuPont Plans Large Pigments Complex

China

DuPont has hammered out an outline with Chinese authorities for the company’s largest investment ever outside the U.S.—a titanium dioxide complex in China expected eventually to cost $1 billion.

Negotiations that began in March have yielded a project agreement between DuPont and city officials in Dongying, in the coastal province of Shandong. The agreement covers a 200,000-metric-ton-per-year TiO₂ plant to be built by DuPont, facilities to be installed by the city and suppliers, and, eventually, a second TiO₂ line.

Pending further negotiations and government approvals, construction on the chloride-process plant is set to begin in 2007 and be completed three years later. It will employ about 350 workers.

“With this and other recently announced investments in Shanghai, Shenzhen, and Changshu, we are well ahead of our previously announced plans to double our investment in China by 2010,” says Thomas G. Powell, president of DuPont Greater China. Recent DuPont investments in China include an ethylene copolymer plant in Shenzhen, an R&D center in Shanghai, and a fluorochemicals plant in Changshu.

DuPont, the world’s largest TiO₂ producer, says China is the world’s fastest growing market for the white pigment. TiO₂ demand in the country is as much as 800,000 metric tons annually, while Chinese production is only about 500,000 metric tons, the company says. U.S. consumption is about 1.1 million tons annually.

James Fisher, president of inorganics consultancy International Business Management Associates, expects that the TiO₂ market will have no problem absorbing the new DuPont capacity. “Pigments will be tight,” he says, “and there is no reason why it will moderate until a new plant comes on. To me, the DuPont project is a no-brainer.”