Shaw-Exxon joint venture tapped for work at new plant in China

A joint venture between affiliate companies of The Shaw Group and ExxonMobil Chemical Company, known as Badger Licensing, says it has been awarded a contract to provide proprietary technology and process design services for a plant under construction in Yangzhou, China. The plant, which is on schedule for a 2013 startup, will annually produce 60,000 metric tons of BPA—a chemical building block used primarily in making polycarbonate plastic and epoxy resins. Badger began marketing BPA technology in 2004 and has licensed nearly 1.2 million metric tons of capacity. The new plant will be owned and operated by an affiliate of Kingboard Chemical Holdings, the parent company of Proper Year Petrochemical Co. It will be the second plant of its kind for the company, which also tapped Cambridge, Mass.-based Badger to provide services for its first BPA plant, also located in China. “Badger’s BPA technology provides high purity [BPA] product suitable for optical grade polycarbonate and epoxy resin applications. The unique catalyst system provides exceptionally long catalyst life resulting in a low cost of production,” says Badger President Mark Healey in a release announcing the contract, the value of which was not disclosed. “We believe this BPA plant will help Kingboard become a market leader in the Chinese phenolics industry.”