Germany: new investment of €100 million in North Rhine-Westphalia

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Air Liquide has just signed a long-term contract to provide Bayer MaterialScience with large quantities of hydrogen and carbon monoxide. To meet this customer’ s needs, Air Liquide will invest around €100 million in a hydrogen and carbon monoxide production unit based at the Chempark Dormagen site, one of the largest chemical parks in Europe, located near Cologne in North Rhine-Westphalia.

This state-of-the-art unit will be designed and built on the customer’s site by Air Liquide Global E&C Solutions teams and is scheduled for commissioning in 2014.

These gases will be used for the manufacture of polymers, which are needed to produce the polyurethanes used to manufacture high-resilience foam seating, durable elastomeric wheels, high performance adhesives etc. Bayer MaterialScience is among the world’s largest polymer companies. The Bayer Group has been a global customer of Air Liquide for many years, with contracts in 8 countries.

Guy Salzgeber, Vice-President North and Central Europe and a member of the Air Liquide Executive Committee, commented: “We are very pleased with this new long term agreement in Germany with the Bayer Group. This major investment is another important milestone in the long-standing business relationship that has developed between our two companies worldwide. This new production unit will provide us with the opportunity to reinforce our positioning in this dynamic industrial basin, particularly in the chemical and oil and gas industry. Germany is one of the key pillars of the Group in Europe with close to €300 million invested in new industrial production units over the last 3 years.”

Tony Van Osselaer, Member of the Board of Management of Bayer MaterialScience AG, Head of Industrial Operations, stated: “This investment by Air Liquide represents an important cornerstone to securing raw materials for our investment in a world-scale TDI unit in Dormagen. With its state of the art technology, we are pleased to have Air Liquide as a partner.”