Covestro's new HDI plant in Shanghai can produce up to 50,000 metric tons of the coating raw material per year and is very environmentally friendly, efficient and safe Photo: Courtesy of Covestro

Leading materials manufacturer Covestro, formerly Bayer MaterialScience, inaugurated its new world-scale plant at the Shanghai site in China on July 7. This marks the German company's expansion to the production of crucial raw material, hexamethylene di-isocyanate (HDI).

The plant, with up to 50,000 metric tons of HDI production capacities per year, will help ensure a stable and flexible supply of HDI in Asia where the market demand for high performance coatings and adhesives continues to grow.

"There is strong demand for coatings and adhesives in such key sectors as the automotive, construction, furniture, footwear and textiles industries in particular in China and the Asia-Pacific region," said Daniel Meyer, head of the Coatings, Adhesives, Specialties (CAS) department at Covestro.

"We believe there is considerable potential for growth through product and application innovations, and we are responding to that with the expansion of our HDI production capacity," he said.

One of the world's largest polymer companies, Covestro is focused on the manufacture of high-tech polymer materials and the development of innovative solutions for products of daily life.

The main sectors served are the automotive, electrical and electronics, construction and sports and leisure industries.

The development of BLULOGIQ, for example, is a unique technology for coating plastic automotive parts that is highly energy efficient and delivers significant cost savings, according to Meyer.

Klaus Schäfer, the Covestro management board member responsible for production and technology, said the addition of the new plant makes Shanghai one of the largest HDI production centers in the world.

Covestro has 30 production sites around the globe, and at the end of the first quarter in 2016, the company employed approximately 15,700 people.

"At this important site we work in a network to produce all our main products. Now, it is stronger than ever before thanks to the expansion of our HDI production," he said.

The new plant is part of an investment program for the site with a volume of more than €3 billion ($3.32 billion), according to Schäfer. This program also calls for polycarbonate production capacities at the site to double to about 400,000 metric tons per year before the end of in 2016. This versatile, high-performance plastic is used in a number of industries, including the automotive, construction and electronics sectors.

Featuring state-of-the-art technology, the new plant also stands out because of its environmentally friendly production process.

For example, in the last step of the process, the use of solvents has been cut by up to 80 percent, and up to 60 percent less energy is used compared with conventional technology. Overall, the carbon footprint of HDI production has been reduced by up to 70 percent.

With this and other innovations, Covestro is helping to meet global challenges, such as the ongoing depletion of resources and environmental pollution - entirely in keeping with the company's purpose: "To make the world a brighter place."