The USD 2.45bn acquisition of the polyols business of Lyondell Chemical Company (1221 McKinney St., Houston, Texas 77010, USA) will not only close the gap in Bayer´s (D-51368 Leverkusen) supply chain, it will also give the group a technology edge over competitors, company executives told journalists attending an international trade press conference in France. – See also Plasteurope.com 22, 1999. With the Lyondell deal, finalised on 1 April 2000, Bayer has moved into the number one position among suppliers of polyurethane starting materials. At the same time polyurethanes business group head Hans-Joachim Kaiser says it also has secured a long-term low-cost supply of the polyol precursor, propylene oxide (PO).

With an annual capacity of more than 1m tonnes of polyols – some 700,000 t of which was picked up with Lyondell – Bayer now commands a more than 25% share of this market, complementing its 25% stake in the other two PU starting materials MDI and TDI. Altogether, the PU business group, which employs 5,500 people at 26 sites on five continents, can expect annual sales of more than EUR 3bn in 2000, some 36% higher than in 1999. Although average global growth rates for polyurethanes are projected to slow to 5% this year, from 6% in the recent past, growth in some regions such as Asia-Pacific (7.5%) is rising fast.

As regards PO, Bayer will exclusively operate seven of the 11 new sites being set up in cooperation with Lyondell, including the four technical centres on three continents. Although the US producer will operate the PO plants, a joint agreement safeguards Bayer´s supply. Alongside a major new facility in Asia to be built at some point in the future, the German-US linkup will revive plans for a PO plant in the Benelux. While Lyondell, and the business´s previous owner, Arco, had planned to build at Rotterdam, Bayer is believed to favour Antwerp, where it already has its own polyols facilities.

While saying the Lyondell buy has taken Bayer into “new dimensions” in PU, executives appear particularly excited about the access gained to new polyols production technology, in particular Lyondell´s “Impact” process for producing long-chain polyether polyols, which enables existing production facilities to double output. The high-performance process currently is in use at two Lyondell locations in Belgium and the US, and Bayer intends to convert its existing long-chain polyols plants to use the technology “as quickly as possible.”

Advantages of Impact include the high purity and molecular uniformity of the polyols produced, according to Hans-Wilhelm Engels, head of polyurethanes R&D at Bayer. As by products such as the low-molecular monols formed during conventional KOH catalysis “hardly occur” and thus cannot be emitted, foams produced in this way meet the strict emission requirements of the automotive sector, even under extreme environmental conditions such as strong sunlight. This represents a “major step” towards no-fogging materials, says Engels. He estimates that the Impact process can supply nearly two-thirds of all demand in the polyols market. Bayer intends to bring to market “large quantities” of foams produced this way. Its “Hyperlite XL” is a development product whose industrial-scale use is “already foreseeable.”

• Plasteurope.com Service:Press conference speeches by Kaiser on Bayer polyurethanes (English): PIE-No. 44654. – Engels on R&D (English): PIE-No. 44655.