Antwerp bulks up

15.02.16. Liquid bulk volumes at Port of Antwerp finished 6.1 percent up to reach 66.7 million tonnes in 2015.
The volume of oil derivatives rose by 4 percent to just below 48 million tonnes. Chemicals experienced particularly strong growth, jumping by 18.2 percent to 13.5 million tonnes. Crude oil volumes were down slightly, ending the at 4.8 million tonnes (down 3.4 percent).
During the past year not only did work go ahead on investments that had already been planned by among others Total (Optara), ExxonMobil (Antwerup EPC2) and Evonik (expansion of the butadiene and MTBE plants), but also new investments were announced.
Invoyn is planning a major investment in a large-scale potassium hydroxide plant that is due to enter production in 2017, while the Japanese company Nippon Shokubai began work several months ago on an investment that will give its Antwerp plant more capacity for production of super-absorbent polymers and acetic acid by 2018. Together, all these investments are significantly reinforcing Antwerp’s position as the largest integrated petrochemical cluster in Europe.