Interquisa Canada, a Spanish-Canadian joint venture between Compania Espagnola de Petroleos’s chemical division Interquisa (San Roque, Spain) and Societe Generale de Financement’s subsidiary SGF Chemie has started construction of a new Purified Terephthalic Acid (PTA) plant in Montreal, Quebec. The new plant will have an initial capacity slated at 500,000 metric tons per year. Interquisa, the majority partner with a 51% interest and a major European PTA producer, provided the technology for the plant. The paraxylene feedstock required for the production of PTA will be provided from another SGF joint venture formed with Coastal Petrochimie, a subsidiary of El Paso Corporation (Houston, Texas). Coastal’s 350,000 metric tons per year paraxylene unit, which was shuttered in 1998, will be reopened at a cost of USD 135 million.
