Leadership & People

ConocoPhillips launches PP business

ConocoPhillips Co. has launched its own Copylene-brand polypropylene business.

The Houston-based business will operate as ConocoPhillips Specialty Products Inc. and will handle sales and marketing of PP produced at a PP plant in Linden, N.J.

Material produced at that plant had been marketed by LyondellBasell Industries for several years, but the contract between the two firms expired at the end of 2009.

Rajiv Singh will serve as general manager of the PP business.

The Linden site has annual capacity of about 775 million pounds of PP and is able to produce both homopolymer and impact copolymer grades.

The plant has a maze-like history. It was first proposed in 1999 by Union Carbide Corp. and Tosco Corp. as a means to use propylene feedstock created by Tosco’s oil refinery in Linden. But both of those firms were out of the picture by the time the plant finally opened in 2003, with Carbide acquired by Dow Chemical Co. and Tosco picked up by Phillips Petroleum Corp. — which then later merged with Conoco Inc. to create ConocoPhillips.

Basell NV handled the plant’s PP output from the start, and that relationship continued when Basell bought Lyondell Chemical Co. in 2007.

PP market veteran Greg Osterholt will serve as sales and marketing director for the new unit. He will be joined on the management team by technical service and development director Ming Wu, product manager Charlie Capshew and customer service supervisor Marcy Ria. The unit’s initial account managers are Grant Gilbert, Leonard Combs and Todd Stautzenberger.

By Frank Esposito

Source: PLASTICS NEWS