Unigel invests US$ 43.8 million in production line to manufacture ABS resin
DCI
Unigel announced a R$ 70 million (US$ 43.8 million) investment to start the production of a new resin in the country, the ABS resin. With the product in its portfolio, the company expects to increase its earnings in R$ 330 million (US$ 206.3 million) as it meets 50% of the demand of the domestic market until 2015. Should the forecast be confirmed, only the resin, which should be used primarily in the car industry, will represent 12.7% of the earnings of the company if taken the numbers of last year, which stayed at R$ 2.6 billion (US$ 1.48 billion).
The investment will be made to put a new production line in the polystyrene plant Unigel already has in Guarujá, on the coast of São Paulo, and whose operation was started just two months ago. According to the Director of Styrene businesses of the company, Marcelo Bianchi, the new plant will have installed capacity for 90 tons and should go into operation in 2012.
"We will take advantage of the synergy of the unit we started operating in March this year to achieve greater competitiveness against the international competition, since there is no production of ABS in the country", he said. "The synergy results from the fact we already produce between 80% and 90% of the compounds that integrate the new resin, so we need to seek in the domestic market only the polybutadiene that weighs from 10% to 20% in the final composition of the new product", said Bianchi. Among the applications are, besides the use by the car industry, the use by the industries of electronics and home appliances. Despite being the same market in which other companies have resins such as polyamide, Bianchi rules out the competition among those products, since the specifics are different.
According to Bianchi, Unigel already had the intention of entering this market segment. One of the reasons was precisely the lack of producers of such resin in Brazil, fact that led to the import of 100% of what is domestically consumed. In 2010, he estimated, the demand in Brazil was of nearly 85 tons of ABS and for that reason Unigel will be able to fully meet the demand if it continues at such level until 2012. But according to him himself, the consumption is on the rise and should exceed such level. "Of the total, we must gain 50% of the market in three years, and the rest of the production will be destined to countries like Argentina", he said.