One of the world’s largest producers of synthetic rubber and a wholly-owned subsidiary of Saudi Aramco, Arlanxeo is said to be closing its 140,000-tonne/year neodymium-based performance butadiene rubber (Nd-PBR) plant in Jurong Island, Singapore. In a statement to its customers, Arlanxeo says this is in line with “changes in the rubber industry” and its efforts to “ help optimise resources and capabilities in its global Nd-PBR production network”.
Production operations at the facility will cease by the end of 2020, with the plant to be fully decommissioned by the first quarter of 2021. The company’s Buna Nd-PBR products will continue to be part of Arlanxeo’s product offerings to markets globally.
In 2018, Netherlands-headquartered Arlanxeo had said it was upgrading its facility in Triunfo, Brazil, to make the production of polybutadiene rubber (PBR) more flexible, to produce the more advanced PBR types like Nd-BR. Meanwhile, the site in La Wantzenau, France, which Arlanxeo says is home to the world’s largest nitrile butadiene rubber (NBR) facility, was modernised to meet growing global demand.
The Singapore Nd-PBR plant, built with an investment of EUR200 million, was officially opened in 2015 and was the company’s first in Asia, catering to the Asia-Pacific market. Nd-PBR is the most advanced butadiene rubber. It serves a vital function in tyre walls and treads, increasing fuel efficiency and enabling ‘green’ tyres.
Last year, Arlanxeo had said it intends to realign its production network of Keltan Ethylene Propylene Diene Monomer (EPDM) elastomers, by closing its production unit in Orange, Texas in Q2 2020. The Orange facility has capacity to produce about 70,000 tonnes/year of Keltan EPDM and employs about 300. It had said it would continue to make butadiene rubber and hydrogenated nitrile butadiene rubber at the Orange facility, its only production site in the US. Arlanxeo also operates EPDM production facilities in Geleen, Netherlands, and Changzhou, China, each with capacity of 160,000 tonnes/year, along with a 40,000 tonnes/year unit in Triunfo, Brazil.
Arlanxeo was established in 2016 as a 50/50 joint venture of German speciality chemicals firm Lanxess and Saudi Aramco, with the latter taking over full control of Arlanxeo in 2018.