American Acryl Brings New Capacity to the North American Acrylic Acid Market

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The following is an advisory by Industrialinfo.com (Industrial Information Resources, Incorporated; Houston, Texas). Currently there are only six North American producers of acrylic acid. American Acryl, a fifty-fifty joint venture of NA Industries (Chattanooga, Tenn.) and ATOFINA Chemicals, Incorporated (Philadelphia, Penn.), is soon to be the seventh with the startup of their new plant in Pasadena, Texas. The new plant has begun the commissioning process and will begin production in the second quarter of 2002, with annual output expected to approach 120,000 metric tons of acrylic acid.

Construction for the new plant began in July of 2000 and was performed by Parsons Energy & Chemicals Group Incorporated (Houston, Texas). A portion of the new acrylic acid capacity will be used as feedstock for a new Butyl Acrylate unit being constructed onsite, which will be owned and operated independently by ATOFINA. Acrylic acid is produced by reacting propylene with air and is used in the manufacture of personal care products, detergents, yarns, and water-based acrylic paints.

Although acrylic acid is currently in oversupply, the global market has been somewhat balanced for the past few years, even as over 150,000 metric tons per year of new capacity was brought online last year in the U.S. Growth projections remain at over 4% annually. BASF closed one of their three acrylic acid units in Freeport, Texas in February 2001, removing approximately 75,000 metric tons per year of capacity from the market. American Acryl's new capacity comes at time when economists are beginning to predict the U.S. economy has reached its low and consumer confidence and spending could be on the rise. This is a good indicator for the acrylic acid market as consumer products make up the majority of its use.