Wanhua Chemical's (Yantai, Shandong / China; www.whchem.com/en) MDI plant will be located on the lower Mississippi river at St. James Parish, Louisiana (see Plasteurope.com of 13.04.2017). The Chinese company's US CEO Weiqi Hua and Louisiana governor John Bel Edwards announced the news on 17 November 2018. The cost of the project in St. James Parish, which lies several kilometres downstream from petrochemical plants at Baton Rouge, Plaquemine and Geismar, amounts to around USD 1.25 bn (EUR 1.1 bn).

The start of construction of the 400,000 t/y plant is planned in 2019, with production scheduled for 2021. Wanhua – which owns PVC and isocyanate producer BorsodChem (Kazincbarcika / Hungary; www.borsodchem-group.com) – is planning to create around 170 jobs.

This is currently the third major petrochemical project being planned in St. James Parish. Formosa Plastics (Taipei / Taiwan; www.fpg.com.tw) is planning to build an ethane cracker with an ethylene capacity of 1.2m t/y, including downstream polymer equipment, and a PP capacity of 600,000 t/y – see Plasteurope.com of 15.03.2017. Named "The Sunshine Project", the complex is currently in the approval phase.

Shandong Yuhuang Chemical's (Heze, Shandong / China; http://en.yuhuanghuagong.com) USD 1.85 bn methanol plant has been under construction since 2017. The plant will have a capacity of 1.7m t/y and is to be completed in 2020 by US subsidiary YCI Methanol One (www.yci-us.com). Koch Methanol (Wichita, Kansas / USA; www.kochmethanol.com) recently acquired an indirect minority equity interest in the subsidiary, thereby securing exclusive purchase of the methanol. YCI Methanol One is planning further phases for the project, with a doubling of capacity being built up as well as unspecified downstream lines.