Japan’s Nippon Shokubai has officially opened a 100,000 tonnes/year acrylic acid (AA) plant that was built at a cost of about $200 million at Cilegon, Banten, Indonesia. This takes its global capacity to 980,000 tonnes, of which 540,000 are in Japan itself.

AA is a key raw material in superabsorbent polymers (SAPs) for disposable diapers, the application that is mainly driving continuing demand growth. SAPs are also used in paints and adhesives. Nippon Shokubai claims to be the world’s largest SAP producer and has integrated AA and SAP facilities across the globe.

Cabot has broken ground on its carbon black capacity expansion project in Cilegon, Indonesia. This phase of the project will add approximately 80,000 tonnes/year of capacity for the regional market, where demand is growing by 4-5%/year. It is expected to be completed in 2021.

This is part of global capacity expansion and debottlenecking project that Cabot announced in May 2018 to increase capacity by 300,000 tonnes/year. The company said that it “has made significant progress” towards this target.