BUSINESS
SNPE CHIMIE ADDS U.S. PRODUCTION Texas plant offers a range of phosgene chemistries to regional customers
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NPE CHIMIE S GOAL OF HAVING
production sites around the world and a stronger presence in the U.S. has been realized with the recent start-up of its plant in La Porte, Texas. Investments in the U.S. and China, along with existing sites in France and full ownership of Framochem in Hungary, will help sustain double-digit annual sales growth, the company says. SNPE Chimie, one of four chemical units of France's Groupe SNPE, has annual revenues of about $145 million. The La Porte plant, the firm's first grassroots facil ity in North America, will offer local cus tomers SNPE's key chemical expertise— phosgenation to produce intermediates for polymer, paper, pharmaceutical, cos metics, and other applications.
THE NEW PLANT is a multiproduct unit having a capacity of 10,000 metric tons per year of phosgene derivatives. One line produces acid chlorides, and the other makes chloroformâtes and carbonates. In addition to the more traditional range of phosgene derivatives, SNPE says it now also produces alkyl chlorides, alkyl hydrazines, and methylations from dimethyl carbonate.
SNPE expects the La Porte plant to add about $20 million in annual sales. The company invested at least $20 million in the plant, which uses its own technology but is
ON-LINE SNPE's facility in La Porte, Texas, is the firm's first grassroots facility in North America. integrated into a Dow Chemical site supplying phosgene. The plant was designed and built and will be operated by DoVs contract manufacturing services unit. Ground was broken in March 1999 with most construction completed a year later. Technical difficulties during the final
stages of construction and start-up de layed operations in La Porte by about a year, but the fine chemicals producer says the plant is now back on track. Techno logical advances, as well as updated oper ating, safety, and environmental controls, have made the unit more complex to operate than SNPE's older and more familiar phosgenation facilities, such as that in Toulouse, France. Start-up also was complicated by the need to test opera tions for each of the many products that the plant can make. SNPE's other U.S. operations, such as VandeMark Chemical's phosgene produc tion and derivative facility in Lockport, Ν. Υ, and Multiple Peptide Systems (MPS), were added through acquisitions in 1999. VandeMark and MPS are both part of SNPE's Isochem subsidiary, which serves pharmaceutical markets. SNPE gained 7,000 metric tons per year of phosgene derivative capacity with its purchase of VandeMark. The output of the Lockport plant, which SNPE says sat isfies current good manufacturing prac tices, is to be directed toward pharmaceu tical markets. The larger volume La Porte plant will be directed toward more basic intermediates markets. At the start of this year, SNPE separated its intermediates and agrochemicals units. Intermediates now operate under the SNPE Chimie name, whereas agrochem icals adopted the name S N P E Agro. SNPE's overall acquisition and expansion activities are part of its pursuit of becom ing one of the top fine chemicals produc ers supplying the life sciences industry— ANN THAYER
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