Union Carbide to Expand in Elastomer Market

Union Carbide Corp. said it will invest $100 million over the next seven years to expand its elastomer capacity to more than 1 billion pounds a year.

The expansion represents a new thrust by Carbide into “flexomers,” ethylene-propylene rubber and other elastomers, said William H. Joyce, president of Carbide’s polyolefins division.

The first phase of the expansion will involve conversion of a 225-million-pound-a-year facility in Seadrift, Tex., to produce a growing variety of rubber-like olefin flexomers.

The conversion is to be completed following the scheduled mid-1989 start-up of a 500 million-pound-a-year Unipol polyethylene reactor at Seadrift, the company said.

Union Carbide has headquarters in Danbury.