Croda Breaks Ground on €18m Investment to Increase Capacity, flexibility and Sustainability
Croda International Plc, who create, make and sell speciality chemicals that are relied on by industries and consumers everywhere, reinforces its commitment to business in Europe with a groundbreaking ceremony at its Chocques manufacturing site in northern France that signals the start of a €18m capital investment.
The focus of the project is a new alkoxylation production facility that will increase capacity at the site by 20% when it becomes fully operational in early 2017. The extra volume will not only allow Croda to meet the ever increasing demand for some of its most renowned surfactants within the Tween, Brij and Myrj range, it will also significantly improve the flexibility of production across the site.
By investing further into one of its core technologies, Croda will repatriation the manufacture of alkoxylated products to Chocques, allowing them to fully service European customers more locally in a wide range of industries from personal care, crop care, and health care, to speciality lubricants, polymers, and applications into oil, gas and mining.
At the groundbreaking ceremony Steve Foots, CEO of Croda said: “It’s great to be here with other members of the Croda Executive Committee to mark the launch of the construction phase of this major investment at our Chocques site. This significant increase in production capacity is a strategic investment to ensure that the site can continue to play its role in supporting our global business.
“We are delighted to be building a full alkoxylation reactor train in the heart of the site, and hope to be supporting this front end and back end manufacturing facility with further investment on product finishing in the near future.”
During this groundbreaking event, a new utilities infrastructure at the site was also officially opened. This will see Chocques further improve its efficiency, reliability and sustainability performance; it already obtains 93% of its steam requirements and 90% of electricity from low carbon sources.
Stuart Arnott, President of Operations at Croda said: “We are really focused on improving existing and investing in new facilities across all of our manufacturing sites. This most recent investment in onsite steam generation at Chocques will ensure that production remains highly efficient when the new alkoxylation plant is commissioned.
“It comes at a time when we have just completed the expansion of our alkoxylation facility in Singapore and we are in the middle of a very large investment in North America that will enable us to manufacture bio-surfactants, to mention just two other projects within the Business.”