Kuwait-based Equate Petrochemical Company has continued its global growth through its wholly owned subsidiary MEGlobal with the launch of work on a new world-scale ethylene glycol (EG) manufacturing facility in Freeport, Texas, US.

The ground-breaking ceremony was attended by senior officials from Kuwait Petroleum Corporation (KPC), Petrochemical Industries Company (PIC), Equate, MEGlobal and the State of Texas, said a statement.

With this plant, Equate is the first Kuwaiti petrochemical company to invest in the US, said a statement from the company.

Equate is the world’s second largest EG producer with 12 per cent of the global market share, it said.

The new facility, to be completed during 2019, will increase Equate’s monoethylene glycol (MEG) capacity by 750,000 metric tonnes annually and will enhance the company’s global presence to meet customer needs, it added.

Through its existing plants in Kuwait and Canada, Equate’s current EG production capacity exceeds 2 million metric tonnes annually. The plant will utilise Dow’s Meteor technology as part of its production process, it stated.

On the side-lines of the ground-breaking ceremony, attendees toured Dow’s US Gulf Coast cracker construction at the adjacent Oyster Creek site, it said.

Equate president and CEO Mohammad Husain, said: “Building on our acquisition of MEGlobal during 2015, this step is part of our strategic expansion plans as an international petrochemical enterprise.”

“The new facility will benefit from overall integration in terms of low cost advantaged shale-gas, strategic location, feedstock availability and operational excellence,” he said.

“The new plant will enable us to meet rising demand for EG throughout the world, especially in the US and Asia. We are pleased to be the first Kuwaiti petrochemical company to have an industrial investment in the US through this EG facility,” he added. – TradeArabia News Service