Governor Dr. Robert Bentley announced that Indorama Ventures Public Company Limited, the world’s leading manufacturer of PET resins, will invest $190 million to build a new manufacturing plant adjacent to its current site on Finley Island Road, near the Tennessee River at Decatur, Morgan County, that will be capable of producing approximately 500,000 tons of resin per year and employ an additional 100 full-time workers between BP and Indorama at the same site, taking the total employees on this site to close to 650 when complete. This would also create additional indirect jobs to engineers and contractors during the construction stage. The project is expected to commence construction in 2013 and will be completed in the fourth quarter of 2015.
Governor Robert Bentley said “Indorama choosing to expand is a compliment to the strong workforce we have here in Alabama. We are constantly working at the state and local levels to help existing companies succeed and expand. Existing businesses are the ones that create most of the jobs in this state, and I appreciate Indorama Ventures for choosing to build this new facility here in Decatur.”
“We have excellent relations with local authorities and appreciate that the infrastructure and convenience of this location played heavily in our final decision to invest further in Decatur,” said Aloke Lohia, the Group CEO of Indorama Ventures. “We have been in the USA since 2003 and today employ a workforce of over 1000 and nearly 700 of them in our PET business alone. We strongly believe in the future of manufacturing in the USA and believe Decatur is an excellent choice for our current expansion plans.”
DK Agarwal, the CEO of the PET Division added, “Since our first AlphaPet plant was completed in 2009, we have added a recycling plant to the site and are able to recycle used PET bottles to produce a portion of our PET resin. The technology we employ today to produce PET is very efficient and uses much less energy and water than a comparably-sized conventional PET facility. Due to this low use of energy and water, and its recyclability, our PET has a lot less impact on the environment than either glass or aluminum.”
Indorama Ventures, while based in Thailand, is a truly global company that has 41 operations on four continents – Asia, Africa, Europe and North America. Over 60 percent of its business is in the Western hemisphere. Today, Indorama Ventures is the second-largest PET producer in North America with production in the US and Mexico. Besides PET resin, the Company also produces fibers and yarns from Polyester and Polyolefins in the United States and last year entered the oxides and glycols business in Texas.
