Sartomer Begins Production of Specialty-Chemicals Manufacturing Base in Guangdong

---

Researched by Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, Texas)--Sartomer (Guangzhou) Chemical Company Limited, a wholly owned subsidiary of France's Total S.A. (NYSE:TOT) (Paris), recently began production of the Xiaohu Island manufacturing base in southern China's Guangdong Province. This is the company's first manufacturing base to begin production in Asia.

Construction on the $30 million plant, the first of three phases, was completed at the end of 2007. The whole project will occupy an area of 83,000 square meters. The new plant is expected to produce 17,000 tons of specialty acrylate monomers and oligomers.

The entire facility is modeled after Sartomer's plant in Chatham, Virginia. and adopts environmental standards as high as those currently applied at other sites in the U.S. and Europe. Products produced in China will target customers in Asia, Europe and the U.S. Acrylate monomers and oligomers can be widely used in products like paint, coatings, inks and adhesives.

With the development of China's economy, the government has approved a batch of international ultraviolet/electronic bean curing companies to build facilities in China, raising the demand for products and technologies related to specialty acrylate monomers and oligomers.

Figures show that demand for acrylate monomers and oligomers in Chinese products is growing at an annual rate of 25%-35%. About 90% of the market demand is concentrated in the Pearl River and Yangtze River Delta areas.

Sartomer entered the Chinese market in 1990 and set up sales and customer service offices in Beijing and Shanghai. The company set up the Asian Development Center in Guangzhou in 2006.

Industrial Info Resources (IIR) is a marketing information service specializing in industrial process, energy and financial related markets with products and services ranging from industry news, analytics, forecasting, plant and project databases, as well as multimedia services.