Brazilian petrochemical company Braskem laid the cornerstone of its Green Polyethylene Project in southern Brazil. The plant will be the first in the world to use sugarcane ethanol to make 100% renewable ethane and polyethylene on a commercial scale. Other projects are underway in Brazil.

The total investment will be about US$250 million and the plant will make 200,000 tons/year of ethane, that will be converted into the same amount of polyethylene at existing plants at its complex. The plant’s operations are scheduled to start in the final quarter of 2010 and it appears that all product has already been contracted. The Company says it has agreements with Toyota Tsusho, trading company of the Toyota group, and Shiseido, renowned manufacturer of cosmetics for the high-standard segment. The potential demand already identified for Green PE is about 600 thousand tons/annum, three times the capacity of the new plant.

Braskem, the leading company in the thermoplastic resins segment in Latin America and second largest Brazilian industrial company owned by the private sector, announced last year that it has received certification by a leading international laboratory, Beta Analytic, which certified that the product contained 100% renewable raw materials.