DAK Americas reports progress on PET plant construction

DAK Americas reports that construction of its PET resin unit at its Cape Fear Manufacturing Site near Wilmington, North Carolina, US, is on schedule.

The new plant, expected to be operational in the fourth quarter of 2006, will add a capacity of 450 million pounds, bringing DAK Americas' total PET resin production capacity to more than 1.1 billion pounds annually.

The world scale polyethylene terephthalate (PET) container resins facility utilizes a new Melt-Tek process, a proprietary PET manufacturing process developed by DAK Americas. Melt-Tek incorporates additional new innovative Melt-to-Resin (MTR) process technologies from Udhe Inventa Fischer. The integrated technology delivers trade leading product attributes and performance with advantages in investment and conversion costs.

DAK's new state-of-the-art manufacturing plant represents the first commercial use of MTR technology in the world. This technology does not require traditional solid state processing and delivers improved product processability through lower temperatures and shorter cycle times. These improvements will be a true value added benefit to PET processors and converters. Additional benefits include increased uniformity of product properties through newly engineered processes.

The project incorporates upgraded equipment located on-site and builds on other infrastructure already in place. Furthermore, the new resins facility is directly integrated with DAK Americas' TPA production plant onsite, which will directly supply the primary raw materials required for PET resin production.