Kemira Oyj (Helsinki; www.kemira.com) has announced the inauguration of its biggest water treatment chemicals manufacturing plant. Together with companies involved in the construction, business partners and customers from Germany, France and Benelux, the celebration offers a unique behind-the-scenes glimpse of this modern and well-integrated chemical production process.
“Kemira is the market leader in chemical treatment of raw and waste water in the developed markets. Our Dormagen plant will help us sustain this leadership position in Europe. This plant is also an example of our continuous efforts in improving the resource efficiency of our production plants and operations. It will operate on 100% recycled hydrochloric acid, supplied by the TDI-plant of Bayer MaterialScience, from which we manufacture specific water chemicals used successfully in municipal and industrial water treatment applications. This will secure Kemira’s long-term, cost-efficient access to this key raw material used in coagulant manufacturing.” says Jari Rosendal, Kemira’s president and CEO.
The clear benefits that the Dormagen location brings are explained by Frank Wegener, managing director of Kemira Germany GmbH: "In addition to well-established site infrastructure, including the high standard of safety and protection due to the plant design and plant fire brigade, Kemira highly values the optimal transport connections and proximity to our markets in the Benelux countries, Germany and parts of France. CHEMPARK Dormagen is very centrally located and offers us all opportunities to carry our product optimally, presently by truck and, looking ahead, also by rail tank cars. Furthermore, we were also able to recruit qualified employees from CHEMPARK while assembling our production team of 15.
Kemira has extensive experience in manufacturing of water treatment chemicals. However, every new production site constructed sets special demands on planners and technicians. Till Huonker, plant manager at Dormagen, comments on some of the required customizing:
"Kemira already produces this type of coagulant at 28 locations worldwide. However, to be part of Dormagen CHEMPARK material-network, we had to customize the production process for our product line “poly aluminum chloride” and tailor the process according to the local raw materials. During just 15 months, a facility was built reflecting the current state of the art. We are now able to produce 14 different specifications of acidic and alkaline aluminum salts, all corresponding to the high quality standards of Kemira."