It’s Better To Be Right Than Fast With Your Polymer Supply
Safe and reliable start-up of our new Monaca, PA polyethylene plant is our top priority so that we can enable your success through a consistent polymer supply.
At Shell Polymers, we don’t want to be hasty; we want to be right. That means doing the prep work to be able to create and test products and confidently address your polymer needs.
We want to build a REALationship with you, and real relationships are built on trust. That’s why we’re holding ourselves to a deliberate standard in determining the quality of your resin. This increases the probability we’re getting it right and mitigating risk, in turn giving you a product and process you can trust. Let’s see how we’re doing that:
A Thorough Commissioning to Meet Expectations
Safe and reliable commissioning and start-up of our new Monaca, PA polyethylene plant is our top priority. For us to fully enable your success, we need to ensure reliable operations there.
It will be one of the largest polyethylene production facilities in the world, producing 3.3 billion pounds of polyethylene annually when fully operational. More important to Shell Polymers is that it is a world-class polyethylene plant operating at the highest standards of our industry from day one onward.
To that end, our commissioning process is detailed and thorough. That means we won’t be putting our product into the market until it’s ready. When our resin supply is available to you, our product will at least match the performance and capabilities of your incumbent material. It will process well and be physically robust.
We will also ensure we can provide the same lot-to-lot consistency and quality of product before we put it out to market. To do that, we will “turn the wheel twice” in commissioning and ensure we can make quality product at-spec, and do it again and again.
You can be confident that you have the full weight of the Shell brand behind our product and our commitment to high quality, reliability, and exceptional customer service regarding your polymer supply.
A Focus on Quality & Safety Reduces Product Issues
We know startups never go precisely as planned. If we find issues, we'll be nimble and have a problem-solving mindset along the way. We’ll consistently huddle up, identify the challenge, propose solutions, make decisions, and move forward to ensure safe and reliable operations that consistently create quality product.
And while our polymer plant is new, our experience in making startups work is deep. Shell has a strong track record in building state-of-the-art refining and petrochemical assets. In fact, Shell Polymers is a part of Shell Chemicals, one of the world’s leading chemicals suppliers, which recently celebrated its 90th anniversary.
Already at work is our Innovation Center, which will be the hub of quality control activity when we start up, and beyond. There, we do the work to ensure that we provide a high-quality pellet every time.
The Innovation Center is comprised of:
- The Analytical Lab - This is the quality control lab for the site. Our Analytical Lab staff is focused on making good product reliably every day, from everywhere in our plant.
The lab checks for quality at every step of the process since everything involved in producing, testing, and transporting touches the polyethylene we make at some point. Any materials brought into, made at, or leave from the site come through this lab. - The Polymer Science Lab - This is home to our Application Testing Laboratory. Here, we work to understand resin characterization, mechanical properties, and parts analysis. Working in concert with the Analytical Lab, we verify product performance, so you get the optimal pellets you expect.
- The Application Hall - It features multiple pieces of commercially sized extrusion and converting equipment representing several different technologies. Everything here is designed to make the quality of our polymer supply best in class, which translates to fewer production and quality issues for the people running your facilities.
Plus, it should hopefully shorten the qualification time spent at our customers’ plants. That equipment allows us to be better at quality control than the competition. We can get real-time, performance-oriented feedback on the resins we are making while they are being produced. That means we can see what you’ll see before your pellets arrive at your facilities.
An Approach Based on Converter Needs
We listened to converters when bringing our product offering to life. We’re intentional in our approach and diligent in how we test our products because that’s what we heard from customers when soliciting feedback.
In fact, we spent more than 1,000 hours listening to the wants and needs of converters before building our plant. You told us that access to quality product that’s reliable, consistent, and reproducible was what you needed. So that’s our priority.
We want our customers to have more than a new source of polymer supply. We will be a quality resource they can count on time and again that helps sustain their business.