Nellore, India — MCNS, the joint venture between Korea's SKC and Japan's Mitsui Chemicals, plans to open a systems house in Nellore in 2018, the company said in a statement.
Construction of the 13 kT/year facility, which is to be located 150 km northwest of Chennai on India's east coast, is due to start in March this year and be complete by December.
MCNS said that the systems house will "accelerate the strengthening of its global competitiveness" and added that the Indian polyurethane market is growing at around 7%/year.
"India produces 4m cars and 9m refrigerators/year, and demand for polyurethane is also expected to increase," MCNS said. The firm added that "many Japanese and Korean auto and home appliance manufacturers have a presence in the country, especially in southern India, and MCNS will expand its business by reliably supplying high quality polyurethane systems through the system house." It is the latests in a number of new systems house investments following Korean automotive manufacturing. MCNS opened a systems house in Mexico last May.
MCS said it expects to start commercial operations from the facility in January 2018.