Basell Polyolefins

The Lyondellbasell Industries AF S.C.A. (Proper spelling LyondellBasell ) is the world's third largest chemical company and the largest producer of polyolefins ( world leader polypropylene and polypropylene composites, leading supplier of polyethylene) and catalysts, as well as one of the leading companies in the development and licensing of polypropylene and polyethylene processes. Polyolefins, for example, and much more to fuel tanks, fuel oil tanks, blown films, screw caps. further processed.

Term

The name LyondellBasell was formed by the merger of the two companies Lyondell and Basell January 1, 2008. It is written without hyphen together, the "B" Basell is also capitalized.

History

On August 27, 1953, the BASF and Shell formed a joint venture for the production of polyethylene, the Rheinische Olefinwerke GMBH (ROW ). The distribution of the products was carried out under their own brand names of the two owners.

The mid-1990s, there was a reorganization of the Plastics Division of numerous companies.

It arose following companies:

1997: Elenac GmbH, based in Strasbourg and Kehl for the production and distribution of polyethylene as a joint venture between BASF and Shell. Were combined Among other things, the Rheinische Olefinwerke in Wesseling and PE - PE pilot plants and research of BASF in Ludwigshafen.

1997: Targor GmbH, located in Mainz for the production and distribution of polypropylene as a joint venture of BASF and Hostalen PP ( Hoechst). Were united in it 's production and research activities of both companies, including the Chemical Park Knapsack of the former Hoechst.

1998: The Elenac GmbH takes over the Hostalen GmbH, a subsidiary of the former Hoechst AG. Production sites are, inter alia, in Frankfurt, Knapsack and Muenchsmuenster. In Frankfurt, the polyethylene research of the former Hoechst AG is located.

October 1, 2000: Elenac, Targor and Montell (PP activities of Shell) are combined in the Basell Polyolefins GmbH as a joint venture between BASF and Shell. It works from the former Montell Ferrara (Italy) and Berre (France) were added. In Ferrara there is a large research center, which now houses the entire PP research.

Due to the mergers of recent years there have been numerous intersections of the fields of activity. There were, for example, each research facilities for polyethylene in Ludwigshafen and Frankfurt. In 2004, the Ludwigshafen site was completely abandoned and relocated some of its research to Frankfurt.

On 5 May 2005, BASF and Shell announced the conclusion of an agreement, Basell to a consortium led by the U.S. based company " Access Industries " and "The Chatterjee Group" to sell. However, the latter later withdrew from the negotiations.

On August 1, 2005, BASF and Shell Chemicals announced the completion of the sale of Basell to Nell Acquisition S.à rl, a subsidiary of Access Industries, New York / USA. The sale price including liabilities EUR 4.4 billion corporate headquarters remained unchanged Basell, Hoofddorp, the Netherlands.

The company has sales operations in more than 120 countries and operates together with its joint venture production facilities in 21 countries worldwide. A total of 6,600 employees were working for Basell, about 5,200 of them in Europe and 1,000 in North America.

In 2004, Basell achieved a turnover of 6.7 billion euro which rose in 2006 to nearly 11 billion euros.

In July 2007, Basell announced the acquisition of U.S. competitor Lyondell Chemical for 19 billion U.S. dollars. End of November 2007 the shareholders approved the acquisition of Lyondell to Basell by. Lyondell has arisen in previous years by the merger of the former Millennium Chemical Company and Equistar.

The new company is named after LyondellBasell Industries and is the third- largest chemical company in the world (after BASF and Dow Chemical Company). The annual sales of Basell in 2006 amounted to almost 11 billion euros, 22 billion of Lyondell U.S. dollars.

It belonged to Access Industries subsidiary company of the Russian-born billionaire Leonard Blavatnik U.S..

In December 2007, Basell announced the acquisition of Solvay Engineered Polymers, then a 100 - percent subsidiary of Solvay, which is considered as a leading supplier of polypropylene compounds in the North American Free Trade Area. The company reported 2006 sales of 200 million euros.

Due to debt of 26 billion U.S. dollars, the company has applied for early January 2009 for bankruptcy protection under Chapter 11 of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code.

After emergence from bankruptcy in May 2010, the company went in September 2010 at the stock exchange ( WKN: A1CWRM )

Production

In Europe, the former company Basell are mainly located that are legally independent companies. The German activities are largely concentrated in the Basell Polyolefins GmbH. The biggest production site of Basell Polyolefins GmbH is the work of Wesseling near Cologne, with about 2000 employees.

More locations in Germany are in the Höchst Industrial Park in Frankfurt with 500 employees, and Hürth -Knapsack, Muenchsmuenster and Bayreuth.

Accident Muenchsmuenster

A plant for the production of polyethylene in Muenchsmuenster at Ingolstadt was completely destroyed on 10 December 2005 an explosion and a daily long-lasting major fire. A firefighter came during this tragedy killed. 75 people lost their jobs, but they were continued to be employed in other Basell sites. The production of the material Hostalen (a trade name for the Basell HDPE, high density polyethylene ) from Muenchsmuenster was taken over by the Frankfurt location. For this purpose a system that was originally supposed to go out of the end of 2005, operated until the end of 2010. There are also many of the employees who have lost their jobs due to the fire worked.

Basell announced in early August 2006 that in Muenchsmuenster again a HDPE plant is to be built. Since mid-2010 there is a state- operated according to the Hostalen ACP process with about 60 workstations that can produce about 320 kilotons HDPE.