Borealis and TotalEnergies today announced the official start-up of their Baystar joint venture’s new 625,000 metric ton-per-year Borstar polyethylene unit. The new unit is the first in North America to use proprietary Borstar technology from Borealis. Borstar technology delivers advanced value-added polymers with enhanced sustainability by enabling light-weighting and the incorporation of greater amounts of post-consumer recycled materials in a variety of end products.
The unit, which more than doubles Baystar’s production capacity in Pasadena, TX, completes the partners’ integrated petrochemicals venture, which includes the expanded Bayport PE facility, and the ethane cracker at the TotalEnergies Platform in Port Arthur, Texas.
Bay 3, as the new PE unit is known, represents an investment of USD 1.4 billion and increases the Baystar site’s total production to over one million tonnes per year.
Work on the new line began in 2019, after the formation of Bayport Polymers in 2018 by French energy and materials firm TotalEnergies and Novealis Holdings LLC, formerly a joint venture between materials firms Nova Chemicals of Calgary and Borealis AG of Vienna. In April 2020, Borealis acquired Nova Chemicals’ 50% ownership interest in the joint venture and subsequently formed a 50/50 joint venture with an affiliate of TotalEnergies S.A. to launch Bayport Polymers LLC - Baystar - in Houston, Texas, US.