Covestro Invests Tens of Millions of Euros in Two New Plants in Shanghai

On July 8, 2022, Covestro officially opened two plants for waterborne polyurethane dispersions (PUDs) and elastomers at its Shanghai integration site in Caojing. The new PUD plant and its accompanying polyester resin production line will be completed in 2024, and the new elastomer plant is expected to be operational in 2023.

The new projects will contribute to high quality and sustainable development in China and many more markets," said Lei Huanli, president of Covestro China, in a media interview. They will also further enhance the scale and strength of Covestro's integrated Shanghai site, which will play an important role in the Group's progress towards achieving its goal of operational climate neutrality by 2035."

The construction site of Covestro's new waterborne polyurethane dispersion plant is known to have a wide range of polyurethane elastomer applications, including mining, transportation, automotive, and energy industries such as offshore wind and photovoltaics.PUDs can be used to produce environmentally friendly coatings and adhesives covering application scenarios such as automotive, construction, furniture, footwear and packaging.Min Chen, director of Covestro's Elastomer Business Unit Asia Pacific, said. "We are very optimistic about the wind power industry, especially in the offshore wind power sector, where elastomer solutions can protect submarine cables and extend their service life, and I believe that Covestro's high-performance elastomer material solutions will contribute more to China's sustainable development and carbon neutrality goals."

In terms of wind turbine blades, Li Jinqi, Vice President of Covestro Coatings & Adhesives Business Unit Greater China, presented the blade edge protection solution. He explained that when wind turbine blades are running, the edge speed is very fast, equivalent to a racing car with a speed of more than 300 km/h. Covestro's PUD coating solution can extend the maintenance cycle of wind turbine blades and improve the reliability and power generation efficiency of offshore wind power.

Li Jinqi said that PUD is a technology invented by Covestro in the 1980s. In the later development direction, Covestro has not only made innovations in the production process of the product, such as the relatively more efficient and environmentally friendly acetone method of production, but also applied environmentally friendly PUD products to as many fields as possible.

Lei Huanli stressed that Covestro's investment and operation are market demand-oriented, and China's wind power industry leads the world, which is the claim.
Data shows that China is the largest country in terms of cumulative installed capacity of offshore wind power, with 26.93 million kilowatts of offshore wind power installed by the end of 2021. The development of offshore wind power is driving the demand for submarine cables, while the high salt corrosion environment of seawater also requires higher performance for wind turbine coatings.

The integrated Shanghai site is Covestro's largest integrated global production base, with 11 plants. By the end of 2021, Covestro will have invested a total of more than 3.8 billion euros in China, of which the cumulative investment in Covestro's Shanghai integrated site will total 3.6 billion euros.