“While the decision to shut down the PO11-unit is difficult, we must ensure all assets within our portfolio are a long-term strategic fit,” said Aaron Ledet, executive vice-president I&D and Supply Chain at LYB. “We are prioritizing our core assets which play a key role in our technology differentiation and circularity strategy or provide attractive returns over the cost of capital. We take our obligations towards our employees, European employee reps, councils, and unions seriously. We have engaged with them in line with these obligations and will continue to do so. We would like to thank them for the constructive dialogue. We are also in communication with customers, suppliers and other parties across the value chain and will continue to do business as usual. There is no change to our working relationship, and we continue to focus on providing an exceptional customer and supplier experience.”

"As part of our Sustainable Future corporate strategy, we’re continuously working to optimally position ����AV to be a reliable partner for our customers and to operate competitively in a challenging market environment," said Hermann-Josef Dörholt, Head of the Performance Materials Business Entity at ����AV. "Due to global overcapacities, persistently weak demand, and high costs in Europe, we have jointly decided with LYB to close the PO11 plant. We will support LYB in implementing this change as socially responsibly as possible. At the same time, we remain committed to the European market and will continue to supply customers with our renowned polyether polyols portfolio.”

The Maasvlakte site, a joint venture between LYB and ����AV, has been operational in the Rotterdam region since 2003. Between now and the end of 2026, LYB will carry out a process to safely shutdown and prepare the demolition of the asset.

In 2024, LYB announced a strategic review of European assets of its Olefins & Polyolefins (O&P) and Intermediates & Derivatives (I&D) business units. LYB has taken the next step in evaluating the option to seek alternative ownership for the O&P sites in the strategic assessment. At this time no decisions have been made and various outcomes remain possible.

In addition to the reduced complexity of the new production process, the connection to the existing infrastructure in Antwerp with four production lines for polycarbonate also has an advantageous effect, as it combines global scale in production with the flexibility of a stand-alone unit.

"The new production process is the first and only one of its kind in the world and enables us to offer a broad portfolio of material innovations," says Sucheta Govil, Chief Commercial Officer at ����AV. "With the new plant, we can now produce and launch new polymer materials on an industrial scale much faster than before. This is the result of several years of development work by our research and process technology teams, as well as our long-term experience with polycarbonates. In our Solutions & Specialties segment, we focus on sophisticated products with a high pace of innovation, which is a key success factor since customer requirements change quickly. The new production line is a prime example of how we implement this strategy and support our customers to the best extent."

"Compared to pure polycarbonates, the copolymers open up new possibilites for us to integrate further functionalities and properties into our materials," explains Lily Wang, Global Head of the Engineering Plastics business unit. "These can range from improved mechanical properties, a higher resistance against chemical attack to an enhanced flame retardancy. By that, we can offer innovative materials that meet the high requirements of our customers in a wider range of applications. We will focus first on materials for the electrical, electronics and healthcare industries, while future innovations might focus on mobility and other trends." To understand its customers' needs, ����AV will showcase some of the products that could be produced with the new plant at the Chinaplas exhibition in Shanghai in April and looks forward to talking to customers about these innovative material solutions.

"The new contract shows: We are making consistent progress on our path to climate-neutral production - even in economically challenging times," says Dr. Thorsten Dreier, Chief Technology Officer at ����AV. "Because we are convinced that our vision of a complete focus on the circular economy and climate neutrality is the only way to ensure the long-term success of our company."

Ulf Kerstin, CCO of RWE Supply Trading, says: "We are delighted to support ����AV in achieving its ambitious sustainability goals and to be able to accelerate the transition to climate-neutral production. The great interest of our customers in green power underlines the importance of CO₂-free power for the manufacturing industry."

The new PPA with RWE replaces a current agreement, which expires at the end of 2025. At the Antwerp site, ����AV produces the high-performance plastic polycarbonate, which is used in car headlights, electrical and electronic components, LED lights, medical technology and many other applications. Polyether and the important industrial chemical aniline are also produced there, and ����AV is currently expanding production there with the construction of a new world-scale plant.

"This supply agreement is a further step towards increasing the proportion of renewable power in our production," says Dr. Georg Wagner, Managing Director of ����AV in Antwerp. "With this and the use of sustainable raw materials and innovative recycling technologies, our production site is on the way to a climate-neutral and fully circular future. We are delighted to have found a partner in RWE with whom we can reach the next level."

����AV aims to achieve climate-neutral production by 2035 and has already concluded several electricity supply contracts worldwide. Since 2023, the site in Shanghai has been supplied with 45% of its electricity from solar and wind power, and in the USA, ����AV has concluded a virtual power purchase agreement with the company Ørsted for 200 gigawatt hours of solar power, which corresponds to twelve percent of the electricity requirements at the Baytown site.

By 2025, ten percent of the electricity at the company's sites in Germany is also to come from renewable energy sources. In this way, ����AV aims to achieve the interim target of reducing greenhouse gases from production by 60% by 2030. At the end of 2023, ����AV covered about 16% of its global electricity needs from renewable sources.

The new agreement, known as a Corporate PPA, covers a capacity of 39 megawatts. This equals the energy supply for about 30,000 private households and reduces ����AV’s carbon footprint in Belgium by more than 38,500 metric tons of CO₂, which is equivalent to the emissions of almost 20,000 cars per year.

More energy efficient production

Production in the chemical industry is traditionally energy-intensive. ����AV sees this as an incentive to take responsibility and minimize both energy demand and CO₂ emissions from production plants and processes. With its various innovative process technologies and a licensed energy management system ����AV has already significantly increased energy efficiency and reduced emissions from its production. The company has set itself the goal to halve its specific carbon dioxide emissions by 2025 compared to 2005. In addition and in line with its new vision, ����AV wants to obtain most of the remaining energy from wind power.

"The new supply agreement is a milestone in the conversion of our production to the use of renewable energies," says Georg Wagner, Managing Director at ����AV in Antwerp. "Wind energy, together with the use of sustainable raw materials and innovative recycling technologies, are important steps towards realizing our vision of becoming fully circular and achieving the climate goals of the European Green Deal. We are pleased to have found a partner in ENGIE to take this next step, with which we support our customers and the corresponding value chains to produce more sustainably."

Largest supplier of renewable energies in Belgium

Vincent Verbeke, head of ENGIE Global Energy Management in Belgium, says, "Being the largest renewable energy producer in Belgium, ENGIE acts to accelerate the transition towards a carbon-neutral world, by supporting its clients in reaching their sustainability goals. We are proud to help ����AV meet their environmental goals and to facilitate their consumption of onshore wind energy. This contract also illustrates ENGIE’s strong ambition to increase renewables’ development in Belgium."

����AV already signed a major industrial customer supply contract with energy provider Ørsted to cover a significant proportion of the electricity requirements of the German sites for a long-time period as from 2025. The current contract with ENGIE will make Antwerp the first ����AV production site powered almost half by wind energy.

At its Antwerp site, ����AV produces the high-performance plastic polycarbonate, which is used in car headlights, electrical and electronic components, LED lights, medical technology and many other applications. It also produces polyethers and the important industrial chemical aniline. The latter is eventually processed into methylene diphenyl diisocyanate (MDI), a raw material for rigid polyurethane foam, which has proven to be an efficient insulator for buildings and in the cold chain.