Acetylated wood planned for China

A new company called Cleantech Building Materials is joining with Jiangsu Sopo Group, a Chinese state-owned chemical maker, to build Asia’s first acetylated wood factory. The partners licensed the technology from Accys Technologies, which operates an acetylated wood plant in the Netherlands and is building one in England. The Chinese facility will be built at Jiangsu Sopo’s plant outside Shanghai, where it already makes the acetic anhydride needed for acetylation. The partners say the process gives softwoods the performance characteristics of tropical hardwoods.