Jacobs Receives Polypropylene Expansion Contracts from Borealis

A Jacobs Engineering Group subsidiary has received two contracts from Borealis to provide project services for the expansion of polypropylene production capacity at Borealis' facilities in Schwechat, Austria, and Ronningen, Norway. Contract values have not been disclosed.

Jacobs is executing both projects under its European Engineering Partnership with Borealis. The two companies established their partnership in 2003 to deliver increasing value to Borealis' modification and capital investment program across various sites in Europe.

The project in Schwechat, which expands the Borstar(R) polypropylene plant's production capacity to 300,000 tons per year, is scheduled for completion towards the end of 2005. Borstar(R) is the proprietary process technology supporting differentiated PE and PP products and is a registered trademark of Borealis A/S, Denmark.

Jacobs performed the basic design for this project in cooperation with Neste Engineering (Porvoo, Finland) and Tecon (Leobersdorf, Austria). The same team will continue this cooperation for the implementation phase, providing Borealis the combined benefits of Jacobs' value-focused project process, Neste Engineering's polyolefins process technology expertise, and Tecon's local site knowledge.

For the project at the Ronningen site, Jacobs is providing engineering, procurement, and construction management services to increase the plant's polypropylene production capacity to 175,000 tons per year. The Jacobs project team is working in close collaboration with Borealis to optimize the project's implementation scope during two scheduled shutdowns, with the plant ready for production in Autumn 2005.