Braskem S.A

Type	Sociedade Anônima
Traded as	BM&F Bovespa: BRKM3, BRKM5 BMAD: XBRK NYSE: BAK
Industry	Chemicals
Founded	2002
Headquarters	São Paulo, Brazil
Area served	Brazil
Key people	Carlos Fadigas, (CEO)
Products	Petrochemical
Revenue	US$ 17.7 billion (2011)[1]
Net income	- US$ 281.2 million (2011) [2]
Employees	6.700
Parent	Odebrecht Petrobras
Website	www.braskem.com.br

Braskem (BM&F Bovespa: BRKM3, BRKM5 / NYSE: BAK /BMAD: XBRK) is a Brazilian petrochemical company headquartered in São Paulo. The company is the largest petrochemical in the Americas by production capacity and the fifth largest in the world. By revenue it is the fourth largest in the Americas and the seventeenth in the world.

Products[link]

Braskem operates 18 chemical plants with a production capacity of over 11 million metric tons per year of chemical and petrochemical products.

Basic Petrochemicals[link]

Braskem controls the two largest petrochemical complexes in Brazil, located in the cities of Camaçari (Bahia) and Triunfo (Rio Grande do Sul). Its basic petrochemical units account for the supply of ethylene and propylene to the company's nearby polymer units. The company also produces other chemical products such as benzene, butadiene, toluene, xylene and isoprene. These compounds are mostly sold to other chemical companies based within the complexes, such as Innova, Elekeiroz and Dow Chemical.

Although its main feedstock is naphtha, the company Braskem's Green Ethylene plant was inaugurated in September, 2010. This green ethylene plant is an important step forward the strategy of becoming a global leader in sustainable chemicals. The plant is the largest industrial-scale operation in the world producing ethylene made from 100% renewable raw materials, i.e., sugar-cane. The project was conceived and installed in less than two years based on Braskem’s proprietary technology.

Located at the Triunfo Petrochemical Complex in the state of Rio Grande do Sul, the plant will produce 200,000 tons of green ethylene, which will be transformed into an equivalent volume of green plastic.

Polymers[link]

Braskem is Brazil's main producer of polyethylene and polypropylene. In addition with ongoing plants located in both petrochemical complexes, in April 2008 Braskem opened a 300,000 metric ton polypropylene plant in the city of Paulínia (São Paulo).

History[link]

The company was formed in 2002 as part of a major restructuring of the Brazilian petrochemical industry. At that time, Copene merged with other petrochemical companies owned by the Odebrecht and Mariani groups - such as Trikem, OPP, Proppet, Polialden and Nitrocarbono - to create Braskem. The new company started operations as the largest petrochemical concern in Latin America.

In 2006, Braskem acquired Politeno, the third largest polyethylene producer in Brazil. The company joined Petrobras and Ultrapar the following year in the biggest merger in Brazilian history, when those three companies acquired Grupo Ipiranga for US$ 4 billion ^[3]. While Petrobras and Ultrapar shared the fuel distribution operations, Braskem took over Ipiranga Petroquímica, Ipiranga's former petrochemical operation.

Purchases[link]

On January 22, 2010, Braskem has announced the full incorporation of Quattor, the second largest petrochemical in Brazil, becoming the second largest in the Americas and the eighth largest in the world. On February 1, 2010, the company bought the petrochemical operations of the American Sunoco, adding more than 1.5 million tons of resins in the production capacity of Braskem, putting it in seventh place overall ranking of the largest petrochemical companies in the world by production capacity.

On February, 2, 2010, Braskem acquires Sunoco Chemicals in the United States. The acquisition of Sunoco's polypropylene business for US$ 350 million initiates the Company's operations in the U.S. market. Sunoco Chemicals has annual production capacity of 950,000 tons of polypropylene. The company headquarters is located in Philadelphia, PA, and Sunoco Chemicals has three plants located at La Porte, TX, Marcus Hook, PA, and Neal, WV, which account for approximately 13% of installed U.S. polypropylene production capacity.

References[link]

1. ^ [1]
2. ^ [2]
3. ^ Source: Petrobras Social and Environmental Report 2007 ([3])

External links[link]

• The company's home page in Portuguese
• The company's home page in English

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