Ashta Plans $60M Upgrade; Velocys Buys Pinto Energy
ASHTABULA, Ohio – The industrial base of Ashtabula County got two shots in the arm Wednesday with announcements that Ashta Chemicals Inc. plans to invest $60 million to upgrade its plant here and that Velocys plc, a British company, has acquired Pinto Energy LLC and will take over its $200 million gas-to-liquids project planned for the lakeshore.
Ashta Chemicals manufactures and markets chlorine and potassium-based chemicals used by the oil and gas industry and to make liquid fertilizers, food products, pharmaceuticals and industrial cleaners.
The plant upgrade will replace the mercury cell processing technology with membrane cell technology, which “will reduce electricity consumption by approximately 20% and produce the same high quality products with less waste and less of an impact to the environment,” says the CEO of the company, Jose Valdes.
Ashta Chemical’s plant here was built in the 1960s; it employs 100.
Ineos Technologies Ltd. of England will provide the membrane electrolyzer equipment and technology in the plant, the company said. Jacobs Engineering Group of Pasadena, Calif., was awarded the construction management contract for the project, which is expected to take up to 30 months to complete.
Meanwhile, on the site of the former Union Carbide complex south of Lake Road where Pinto Energy proposed last September to built a 2,800 barrels per day gas-to-liquids plant, the new owner of the company says will build its “smaller-scale GTL” prototype.
Last year Velocys, founded in England, moved its offices to Houston, reports the Houston Business Journal, to find a niche in the United States for “the company’s method of building gas-to-liquid conversion plants … near remote oil and gas fields.”
"The acquisition of Pinto Energy, one of North America's leading smaller scale GTL project developers, provides Velocys a key stepping stone for commercial growth,” said the CEO of the company, Roy Lipski, in a prepared statement. “It will strengthen our route to market, accelerate early adoption, and deepen our ties with suppliers, partners, investors and customers across the entire GTL value chain.”
CEO of Pinto Energy is John Baardson, whose Baard Energy coal-to-liquid project announced more than seven years ago for Wellsville never got off the ground.
Baardson noted in a statement accompanying the acquisition announcement that Pinto brings “project development capabilities. … Together we are set to accelerate development of smaller scale GTL assets in North America, the time for which has never been better."
Terms of the all-stock transaction were not disclosed.
Copyright 2014 The Business Journal, Youngstown, Ohio.
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