As part of its global effort to increase the availability of PA 6.6, producer Wichita, Kansas, U.S-based Invista has signed an exclusive long-term purchasing agreement with Saudi Arabia's Petrochemical Conversion Company (PCC) to take an unspecified amount of engineering resin from the Saudi company's new 50,000 t/y plant scheduled to start up at Al Jubail late this year or early next year.

Invista, which became world's largest producer of PA 6.6 by acquiring the DuPont franchise in 2003, is owned by Koch Industries. Outside Saudi Arabia the product will be marketed under Invista's "Torzen" brand.

The agreement with PCC, a 50:50 subsidiary of Saudi Industrial Investment Group (SIIG) and Chevron Phillips Petrochemical Company, is Invista's second move to extend supply of the polyamide to markets outside the U.S. In May of this year, the company reserved land for a world-scale PA 6.6 plant as part of an integrated complex within the Shanghai Chemical Industry Park (SCIP) at Shanghai, China. The plot is adjacent to the U.S. company's planned facilities at SCIP for 215,000 t/y of PA feedstocks hexamethylene diamine (HMD) and adiponitrile.