Lotte Chemical UK Ltd. orders MTR® plant from Uhde Inventa-Fischer

PTA and PET producer Lotte Chemical UK Ltd., a wholly owned subsidiary of KP Chemical Corporation of Korea and part of the Lotte group of companies, has commissioned Uhde Inventa-Fischer to build a plant for the production of high-quality PET. The new plant will have a production capacity of 200,000 tonnes per year and will be located at Lotte’s production facility at the Wilton International site, near to Middlesbrough in the North – East of England.

Uhde Inventa-Fischer’s scope of supplies and services includes the basic and detail engineering, supply of all plant components and supervision of the construction and commissioning activities. The operating personnel will also be trained by Uhde Inventa-Fischer’s experienced specialists. Under the contract of Uhde Inventa-Fischer and Lotte, ThyssenKrupp Uhde and Uhde India will provide the civil and steel structure engineering.

The Uhde Inventa-Fischer's state-of-the-art, energy-efficient and patented Melt-To-Resin (MTR®) technology will be applied for the production. The MTR® process is based on the two-reactor high-viscosity technology developed by Uhde Inventa-Fischer and uses the patented ESPREE® and DISCAGE® reactors to ensure production of the required high melt viscosity on a sustained basis. It is a cost efficient replacement for the more traditional two stage plants for the production of PET involving a Continuous Polymerisation Plant (CP) with four reactors and a Solid State Polymerisation Plant (SSP) and consequently has lower investment and operating costs for similar sized installations.

Product quality of resin from MTR® technology plants is proven to be excellent and resin made from this process is already well established in the European marketplace and is used, for example, as feedstock for the production of water and CSD bottles. Lotte Chemical UK Ltd. produces the raw material, pure terephthalic acid (PTA), at its site and will supply PTA to the new plant directly via pipeline.

Uhde Inventa-Fischer is a leading engineering company located in Berlin, Germany, and Domat/Ems, Switzerland. Uhde Inventa-Fischer’s scope of services includes the development, engineering and construction of industrial plants for the production of polyester, polyamide and polylactic acid. The company has built more than 400 production plants throughout the world. Having been part of the ThyssenKrupp Uhde group since 2004, the company is thus also part of ThyssenKrupp AG.