Licensing Equistar polyethylene technology

Polyethylene is no longer just a commodity chemical sold on MI and Density. Since its invention over 50 years ago the application of polyethylene products has grown to touch every aspect of the lives of every person in the developed world. Polyethylene is a highly significant contributor to the GDP of many countries, and represents a vibrant business of global proportions. As markets and applications have grown, so too has the level of requirements and demands upon the resin. As resin customers strive to become increasingly competitive, processing machine manufacturers have developed faster and more efficient equipment placing further demands on the performance and design of the resins. As a result resin producers are continually developing higher performance resins to service specialty, value-added, as well as commodity applications. Resin is sold today on performance, not just MI and Density. Equistar is a limited partnership that resulted from a clear understanding of the market requirements of polyethylene. Many people are aware of the manufacturing capacity of Equistar, what they may not realize is that Equistar's strongest competitive position comes from the breadth of polyethylene technologies available to Equistar for meeting market requirements. In recognizing that one technology cannot produce the best resin for every application, Lyondell, Oxychem, and Millennium brought together a suite of catalyst and process technologies to produce resins tailor-made for specific applications. Equistar has available peroxide, chromium, Ziegler-Natta, and single-site catalyst systems. Our manufacturing process technologies include slurry, gas-phase, bimodal, high pressure and solution. The resultant combination opens virtually every PE market to Equistar businesses. Our licensing program is structured to reflect this diversity. It is our view at Equistar that a Licensee's market and product requirements should determine the technology selection, and not the reverse. We will demonstrate the validity of this approach in this presentation as we explain how we match process and catalyst technologies to produce best-in-class, value-added products for Equistar and for our licensees.