Bayer last month (September) inaugurated the new production facilities of the Bayer MaterialScience subgroup in Shanghai.

“China is of central importance to Bayer in the Asia-Pacific region - both as a production base and for our business strategy,” said management board chairman Werner Wenning, underlining the country’s significance for Bayer.
The project at the Shanghai Chemical Industry Park represents a total capital expenditure volume of about $1.8 billion through 2009, explained Wenning at the inauguration. He said it was Bayer’s biggest-ever project outside of Germany.”
“The integrated Bayer site in Shanghai is developing into our biggest and most technically advanced production site in the entire Asia-Pacific region. In turn, this region – and particularly China – is one of the most important future markets for the Bayer Group, a market that is set to become even more significant and dynamic.” Wenning said the newly inaugurated facilities of Bayer MaterialScience would add substantially to production capacities.
Bayer MaterialScience CEO Dr Hagen Noerenberg described the remarkable perspectives offered by the integrated site: “In the future this site will supply customers throughout the region with approximately 900,000 tonnes of plastics products a year. Our long-term commitment to the Chinese market and our customers here is a strategic cornerstone of our activities. We aim to play a leading role in advancing the Chinese plastics industry through our products, technologies and employee training.”
In these respects the company expects the new production facilities to play a key role. Dr. Jurgen Dahmer – senior Bayer representative for Greater China and senior representative for Bayer MaterialScience in China, and thus “landlord” of the Shanghai site – presented the details of these plans in his welcoming address. The existing facilities will now be supplemented by a world-scale polycarbonate production unit with a starting capacity of 100,000 tonnes per year, the first polyurethane facility at the Bayer site - a crude MDI (diphenylmethane diisocyanate) splitter with a capacity of 80,000 tonnes per year and a production unit for HDI (hexamethylene diisocyanate) with an initial capacity of 30,000 tonnes per year.
The polycarbonate facility for the manufacture of Bayer’s high-tech material Makrolon represents a capital investment of $450 million. There are already plans to expand the capacity of this facility, which will primarily supply customers in the region, to 200,000 tonnes per year by 2008.
The Asia-Pacific region is the biggest market for polycarbonate in terms of volume, with 1.5 million tonnes sold last year, more than half the world market of 2.7 million tonnes. Of this volume, Greater China alone accounts for 650,000 tonnes, with consumption growing at around 18 per cent a year.
Polyurethane raw materials are a further focus of production at the site. A large-scale MDI production facility with a capacity of 350,000 tonnes per year, due on stream in 2008, will be the largest of its kind in the world. Also planned is a production facility for the intermediate TDI (toluene diisocyanate), which is used to manufacture flexible foams for applications such as car seats, mattresses and furniture. With a capacity of 160,000 tonnes per year, this plant is expected to come on stream in 2009.
Bayer began its production activities at the site in 2003 with coating raw materials, for which capacity currently is 22,500 tonnes per year. The company will now be able to produce another 30,000 tonnes of the raw material HDI, with the option of expanding this capacity by a further 20,000 tonnes.
Also last month, Bayer MaterialScience AG celebrated the inauguration of its newly expanded Polymer Research & Development Centre (PRDC) facility in Shanghai.