Westlake businesses in the Performance & Essential Materials segment operate 25 sites around the world that produce the fundamental chemical building blocks that are used to make essential products for the agricultural, food, medical, construction, automotive, electrical, and cleaning sectors, among others. These intermediate materials provide unsurpassed protection and durability for the end-use products.
Businesses in the Performance & Essential Materials segment include:
Westlake European
& Asian Chlorovinyls
Taiwan Chlorine
Industries Ltd. (TCI)
Westlake Olefins
The source materials for Westlake Performance & Essential Materials are ethylene and styrene. Ethylene is the primary ingredient to create value-added chemical products, including polyethylene, ethylene dichloride (EDC), ethylene oxide, styrene, and vinyl chloride monomer (VCM). These are the bases for an extensive range of end-use materials, ranging from medical products and food packaging to cleaning products and automotive components.
Westlake Epoxy
Westlake Performance & Essential Materials produces epoxies that are used for wind turbine blades, light weighting electric vehicles (EVs), and aerospace and consumer coating applications. These epoxies include specialty resins, coatings and composites for a wide range of industries.
Westlake North American Chlor-alkali & Derivatives
Westlake is the second-largest Chlor-alkali (chlorine and caustic soda) producer in the world, which capitalizes on globally low-cost natural gas for power in North America. Westlake is among the largest producers globally of caustic soda, which is a key building block for aluminum and polyurethanes. Chlorine is used in the manufacture of VCM and PVC, and is a key component used in water treatment by municipalities and in swimming pools.
Westlake Polyethylene
Westlake offers a diverse portfolio of polyethylene materials for a variety of applications. Polyethylene is commonly used to make trash bags, films for food packaging, injection molding, carpeting, adhesives, and more. We deploy well known technologies and are proven as a reliable supplier with redundant production facilities for better supply security. Our chemists, engineers, and technicians are skilled at creating unique solutions to tailor resins to meet the demands of our customers. Westlake offers low-density copolymers, linear low-density plastomers, functionalized polymers, and waxes in addition to a full product range of homopolymers and butene- and hexene-based gas-phase linear low density resins with a focus on serving the flexible packaging, extrusions coating, and other niche markets.
Westlake North American Vinyls
Westlake Vinyls produces vinyl chloride monomer (VCM) and polyvinyl chloride (PVC), which is the worlds third most widely used plastic and is an attractive and sustainable alternative to traditional materials, such as glass, metal, wood, and other plastic materials, because of its versatility, durability and cost competitiveness. Westlake is the second-largest producer of PVC in the world leveraging the high level of product integration and long-term low cost feedstocks.
Westlake European & Asian Chlorovinyls
Through our European and Asian chlor-alkali and vinyls manufacturing facilities, Westlake delivers caustic soda and vinyl chloride to suspension PVC, PVC resins and PVC specialty resins. These materials support the automotive, construction, and medical sectors among others. See Westlake Huasu, Westlake Vinnolit and Taiwan Chlorine Industries Ltd. (TCI) on the right.
Westlake Huasu
Huasu, located in China, is one of the key Westlake operations in Asia. The product portfolio is highly integrated ranging from PVC resin, PVC calendaring film, PVC lamination and printing products for all markets and applications, e.g. in the building and construction, packaging, automotive, healthcare and electrical sectors.
Westlake Vinnolit
Vinnolit, based in Germany, is the European vinyl chemical branch of Westlake Performance & Essential Materials. The product portfolio ranges from caustic soda and vinyl chloride to suspension PVC and PVC specialty resins for all markets and applications, e.g. in the construction, automotive and medical sectors.
Taiwan Chlorine Industries Ltd. (TCI)
TCI, located in Taiwan, is a joint venture company between Westlake Corporation (60%) and PPG Industries (40%). The products include caustic soda, chlorine, HCl, bleach and hydrogen for all kind of domestic industries such as electronic, petrochemical, steel, chemical and water treatment.