 |
 |
| Back Issues |
|
|
|
|
ACS Members can sign up to receive C&EN e-mail newsletter.  |
|
|
 Join ACS |
|
|||||||||
|
CUSTOM MANUFACTURING
Toulouse phosgene edict halts a big push into the U.S. market
The firm, which in October combined four commodity, specialty, and fine chemicals operations into a single business called Isochem, says it is exiting phosgene-based commodities following the French government's decision to prohibit phosgene production in Toulouse, the site of its largest phosgene plant. SNPE's Toulouse plant was shuttered in September 2001 after an explosion at a neighboring fertilizer plant operated by TotalFinaElf. The phosgene prohibition was issued in September 2002. The LaPorte plant, SNPE's first grassroots operation in the U.S., was designed, built, and operated by Dow Chemical's contract manufacturing services business. The plant employs SNPE technology and is supplied with phosgene already made on-site by Dow. SNPE announced the deal with Dow in 1999, the same year that it acquired a plant in Lockport, N.Y., that makes phosgene and derivatives. The Lockport facility is directed toward pharmaceutical markets and will remain part of Isochem, the company says. SNPE invested about $20 million in LaPorte, with expectations that sales would reach $20 million annually. The plant--designed to manufacture acid chlorides, chloroformates, and carbonates as well as alkyl chlorides, alkyl hydrazines, and dimethyl carbonate derivatives-- never operated at full capacity, according to an SNPE representative who declines to comment on revenue from the site. It began operation in 2001. Mark Sullivan, commercial director for Dow Haltermann Custom Processing, says that Dow staff will likely be redeployed and the plant, dismantled and salvaged. He declines to comment on the status of Dow's design-build-operate program, launched in 1998, which includes an agreement to produce methanesulfonyl chloride and methanesulfonic acid for Chevron Phillips Chemical in Freeport, Texas. |
|||||||||
|
Chemical & Engineering News |
|||||||||
|
||||||||
|
||||||||
|
||||||||
|
||||||||
|
||||||||
|
||||||||
