Salt Lake-based Huntsman Corp. announced Monday that it has chosen its Geismar, La., site as the location for a previously announced new 100 million pound maleic anhydride facility.
The company said in a release that it will start detailed engineering and reactor procurement immediately. Huntsman has chosen a fast-track implementation model that will let the plant start up in the third quarter of 2008.
"The Geismar site was chosen after evaluating six possible locations," said Huntsman Vice President Tom Fisher in a prepared statement. "Huntsman has a world scale MDI manufacturing complex at the site. We are confident that the Geismar site will provide the most attractive economics for the plant due to the feedstock availability and the ability to leverage off existing Huntsman infrastructure currently located at the Geismar site."
Maleic anhydride is the building block for unsaturated polyester resins used mainly in the production of fiberglass reinforced resins for construction, automotive and marine products. It is also used in formulations for oil additives, food additives, paper chemicals, epoxies as well as other applications.
Huntsman is a global manufacturer and marketer of differentiated and commodity chemicals. It has 11,300 employees and 57 operations in 22 countries and had 2005 revenues of $13 billion.