Austrian polyolefin maker Borealis (Vienna; www.borealisgroup.com) and French petrochemical group TotalEnergies (Paris; www.totalenergies.com) have announced the commissioning of a new large-scale US HDPE plant in Pasadena, Texas as part of their joint venture Baystar (www.baystar.com).

Using the Borstar 32G process technology, the Bay 3 plant increases HDPE capacity site 625,000 t/y, Borealis said. With the two existing, significantly smaller plants, Baystar’s total available output for the resin has grown to over 1 mn t/y.

The plant, which costs USD 1.4 bn (EUR 1.3) to build, completes the venture’s integrated petrochemical project in Texas. In addition to the three PE plants in Pasadena, the ethane cracker on the TotalEnergies platform in Port Arthur went online last year with a C2 capacity of 1 mn t/y.

Plasteurope.com’s US cooperation partner RTi (Fort Worth, Texas; www.rtiglobal.com) said the new line is likely to increase US oversupply. Given weak demand, currently high inventories are not expected to decrease significantly in the fourth quarter. To counteract price declines on the domestic market, and since other players such as Nova Chemicals and Shell will soon be commissioning new capacity, US producers will increasingly look for salvation in exports, according to RTi.