Supply of polyurethane flexible foam component TDI is being hit even harder than PVC (see Plasteurope.com of 14.10.2020). BASF (Ludwigshafen / Germany; www.basf.com) just recently confirmed that the force majeure declared at its headquarters on 1 September 2020 (see Plasteurope.com of 03.09.2020) would continue for the foreseeable future, and now compatriot competitor Covestro (Leverkusen; www.covestro.com) announced an unplanned outage at its German site in Dormagen on 12 October 2020. The company said this was due to a technical malfunction that occurred during the start-up after the maintenance turnaround. Covestro has meanwhile also declared force majeure here.

The two BASF and Covestro plants in question are the backbone of European supply, with a capacity of 300,000 t/y each, according to Plasteurope.com’s Polyglobe database (www.polyglobe.net). Wanhua Chemical subsidiary BorsodChem (Kazincbarcika / Hungary; www.borsodchem-group.com) started its two Hungarian facilities in September after maintenance was completed; both should now be operating nearly at nominal capacity, which is at 250,000 t/y.