Lanxess and TSRC Team Up in China

To meet growing Chinese demand for nitrile rubber, Germany's Lanxess and Taiwanese synthetic rubber maker TSRC are forming a 50/50 joint venture to build a $50 million plant in Nantong, China.

The partners plan to begin construction on the 30,000-metric-ton-per-year plant in September and start it up in the first half of 2012. TSRC already operates emulsion styrene-butadiene rubber, polybutadiene rubber, and thermoplastics elastomer plants in Nantong, which is northwest of Shanghai.

Double-digit annual growth rates in China for nitrile rubber used to make such things as hoses, seals, and gloves is the reason behind the venture, says Lanxess board member Werner Breuers. "The partnership brings us a step closer to our customers and opens the door to further tie-ups in the emerging Asian market in the future," he adds.

TSRC's CEO, Wei-Hua Tu, says the joint venture "brings together TSRC's long history of engineering and production know-how in China with Lanxess' marketing and technical expertise in synthetic rubber." Lanxess, which claims to be the world's largest maker of synthetic rubber, will supply nitrile rubber to joint venture customers from its site in La Wantzenau, France, until the Nantong unit starts up.

The new venture with Lanxess is not TSRC's only new joint venture. Last month, the Taiwanese firm inked an agreement with Indian Oil and Japan's Marubeni to build a 210,000-metric-ton styrene-butadiene rubber plant at Indian Oil's Panipat, India, complex (C&EN, April 12, page 14). The $200 million unit is also scheduled for completion in 2012.