Selas-Linde, part of the engineering division of Germany’s Linde, has been awarded the contract to build a new ethylene furnace for the Ineos cracker at Grangemouth, Scotland, which is undergoing expansion. The Linde Group unit based at Pullach, Germany, specializes in process furnaces, fired heaters, LNG vaporizers and incinerators for petrochemical production.

Ineos said this week it is investing £60m in its upgrade project. This significant investment, said Grangemouth operator Ineos O&P, “affirms the company’s commitment to UK manufacturing at a time when it is in decline across many industrial regions.”

The addition of a tenth furnace will improve efficiency of the cracker and help ensure that it can meet growing demand, the UK arm of the Swiss-based group said, Having additional furnace capacity will provide “a range of future opportunities” for business in Scotland as well as England’s northern region, it added.

Subject to planning approval, preparatory project work on the new furnace will begin later this year, Ineos said, with the main construction work starting in 2019 and commissioning expected toward the end of 2020.

Ethylene capacity at Grangemouth is being ramped up from just over 700,000 t/y currently to more than 1 m t/y as part of a €2 billion expansion program across Ineos’ European sites.This will see output capability in Scotland and Norway rise by as much as 900,000 t/y. The ongoing project is expected to add150 jobs to present 1,350 staff at the Scottish site, which was rocked by a labor dispute five years ago.

Along with the cracker expansion projects, the group’s pan-European expansion plans foresee construction of a new cracker at an as yet undisclosed location and a 750,000 t/ propane dehydrogenation (PDH) plant at Antwerp, Belgium.