Clariant recently announced that its Business Unit Catalysts has signed long-term cooperation agreements with CB&I’s Lummus Novolen Technology GmbH business unit. The two companies will combine and ramp up R&D efforts to develop improved polypropylene catalyst and donor technologies. Once completed, existing and future Lummus Novolen licensees and other polypropylene producers will reportedly be supplied with the new catalyst developed by a new state-of-the-art Ziegler-Natta polypropylene catalyst production line.

Clariant and Lummus Novolen will jointly invest about CHF 65 million (~ $70 million) in a new polypropylene catalyst production line at Clariant’s catalyst production hub in Louisville, Ky. The plant is expected to be on-stream in 2015.