OREANDA-NEWS. December 25, 2015. INEOS Nitriles has announced that it is to re-establish production on its 4th reactor at its Green Lake facility (Texas, USA), re-instating 100kt of capacity.

Despite extremely tough market conditions, INEOS Nitriles is convinced that a combination of long term advantaged US propylene, world leading technology and economies of scale will ensure that Green Lake will be able to compete globally.

Gordon Adams, Commercial Director INEOS Nitriles said at the IHS Conference in Singapore: "The addition of significant production capacity in China has forced worldwide acrylonitrile operating rates down to less than 80%, the lowest level since 2008. However, with its feedstock advantage, scale and leading technology, the INEOS Nitriles, Green Lake facility will be able to compete in the global market and as such we have decided to restart our 4th reactor to support the long term growth of our global customer base.”

INEOS Nitriles operates four plants worldwide, two in North America (Texas & Ohio) and two in Europe (Germany & UK). Green Lake, based in Calhoun County, Texas is one of the largest and most efficient plants in the world. It will once again be capable of producing 545,000 tonnes of Acrylonitrile per year.

As part of this announcement, INEOS Nitriles has also stated that it will invest in the scheduled turnaround on the Seal Sands asset in 2016.

Acrylonitrile is used as a raw material for the production of synthetic fibres, engineering plastics (ABS, Acrylonitrile Butadiene Styrene), carbon fibre, synthetic rubber and water soluble polymers. These products are used in a very diverse range of end use markets, such as textiles, automotive components, building and construction materials, household appliances, electronic equipment, sporting goods, water treatment and oil & gas production.