US chemical producer Celanese is undertaking a 20,000 t/y capacity increase for its acetal polymer polyoxymethylene (POM) at the Industriepark Höchst chemical park near Frankfurt, Germany.  The additional capacity is scheduled to be in place within the next 18 to 24 months.

With the upgrade, to be achieved through debottlenecking, the company said the plant will be “the largest and most efficient” worldwide. The cost of the project, which is designed to support the continued growth of the company’s global engineered materials business, has not been disclosed.

Chief Operating Officer Scott Sutton said the capacity expansion “further demonstrates” Celanese’s ability to respond to global customer demand, the  expertise of its engineering staff and its leadership position manufacturing and compounding highly engineered materials.

Celanese did not provide current capacity figures for the Frankfurt plant; however, when the facility was commissioned in 2011 the company said it was designed to produce 140,000 t/y with an option to upgrade to 170,000 t/y.

Ticona, as the Celanese engineering plastics business was then known, received an investment incentive of €670 million from Frankfurt airport operator Fraport to build the new plant in exchange for moving an existing 110,000 t/y POM facility from the path of a planned new runway.