DuPont Adds Third Polymer Sheet Line at North Carolina Plant

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Researched by Industrialinfo.com (Industrial Information Resources Incorporated; Houston, Texas). DuPont Automotive (Troy, Michigan), a business unit of E.I. DuPont de Nemours (NYSE:DD) (Wilmington, Delaware) is preparing to undertake a $15 million upgrade. The upgrade will involve the addition of a third production line, at its Fayetteville, North Carolina works (Plant 1508421), in order to increase production of polymer interlayer sheets used to strengthen architectural and automotive safety glass. The expansion project is expected to add 40 to the present 500 employees.

Process design/build was awarded to Berstorff (Florence, Kentucky), a U.S. subsidiary of Berstorff GmbH (Hannover, Germany), a turnkey plastics industry equipment provider. Berstorff, along with Demag Plastics and Netstal, is part of Mannesmann Plastics Machinery Group (Munich, Germany). Berstorff manufactures plastics extrusion equipment primarily for the automotive, construction, and packaging industries.

JBEK (JV - BE&K and Kvaerner), a DuPont construction alliance partner, is doing the design for the addition. Construction kick-off is scheduled for Fall 2004, with production start-up in Fall 2005. All subcontractor contracts have been awarded.

The new line will increase production of DuPont's Butacite polyvinyl butyral sheets, used primarily for automotive safety glass, and also increase production of its SentryGlas Plus line, a hurricane-resistant architectural safety glass.