Chemical giant, Sasol, announced on Tuesday that the fifth and sixth units at its Lake Charles Chemicals Project (LCCP) have achieved beneficial operations, which has raised the Louisiana ethane cracker project’s total online nameplate capacity to 86 per cent.

The units that just went online are the Ziegler Alcohol Unit and the Guerbet Alcohol Unit on the 16th of June 2020 and the 19th of June 2020, respectively. According to Sasol, with the addition of these new units, 100 per cent of LCCP’s speciality chemicals capacity is online.

Sasol says that the Ziegler unit of the Lake Charles Chemical Project complements the Lake Charles existing Ziegler plant and it is the largest unit of its kind in the world. The units are reported to add a nameplate capacity of 173,000 tons per year of alcohol and 32,000 tons of alumina.

It said that the Guerbet unit of the Lake Charles Chemical Project is the organisation’s second Guerbet alcohol site. The unit is the largest alcohol plant in the world, with a nameplate capacity of 30,000 tons per year. The company’s first Geurbet alcohol site is located in Brunsbuettel, Germany.

The President and Chief Executive Officer of Sasol, Fleetwood Grobler, said, “The beneficial operations of these LCCP facilities progresses Sasol’s seven-unit U.S. Gulf Coast mega-project to the cusp of completion. The additional capacity strengthens Sasol’s leadership position in the speciality alcohol and alumina markets, which is core to the company’s chemicals growth strategy.”

Sasol is also expecting the last unit, which is of low-density polyethene (LPDE), to go online in September. The organisation said that the project has created more than 800 full-time manufacturing employments and up to 6500 employment opportunities for people onsite, during construction and has generated close to $200 million in local and state tax revenue.