Industrial gases joint venture in Shandong, China

The technology group The Linde Group and refining and chemical company SINOPEC Qilu Company have signed an agreement to form a 50/50 joint venture as well as a long term industrial gases supply contract.

The joint venture, named Zibo BOC Qilu Gases Co., Ltd., has a total investment of approximately 64 million USD. Additionally to SINOPEC Qilu´s two existing air separation units, which will become property of the new joint venture, a new air separator with a capacity of 1,500 tonnes of oxygen per day will be erected at Zibo, Shandong Province (PRC), until March 2008. Ultimately, the joint venture with a staff off around 180 will supply SINOPEC Qilu, other companies in the Zibo area, and third party markets with a total of more than 4,000 tonnes of oxygen, nitrogen and argon per day.

"This joint venture will reinforce the strategic partnership between The Linde Group and SINOPEC. Zibo BOC Qilu Gases will be the leading supplier of industrial gases in the region, and improve our capability to serve one of our core customers with optimal solutions", said Trevor Burt, member of the Executive Board of Linde AG and responsible for the Asia/Pacific region.

"With the objective of focusing on our core business, and looking at the very good track record of BOC in China, we selected The Linde Group as our partner. The economic benefits for both parties from this joint venture will secure a win-win relationship," commented Wang Shude, manager of SINOPEC Qilu.

The Linde Group is a world leading industrial gases and engineering company with more than 53,000 employees working in around 70 countries worldwide. Following the acquisition of The BOC Group, the company has gases and engineering sales of approximately 12 billion euro. The strategy of The Linde Group is geared towards earnings-based growth and focuses on the expansion of its international business with forward-looking products and services.
BOC, part of The Linde Group since September 2006, was the first industrial gases company to invest in China in 1987. BOC´s investments, particularly in the chemicals, electronics and metals sectors in China, now total around USD 600 million. BOC has more than twenty wholly-owned companies and joint ventures in China, employing some 1,600 people.

SINOPEC Qilu, one of the subsidiaries of SINOPEC Corp., is one of the largest refining-chemical integrated petrochemical companies in China with the sales revenue of RMB 57.7 billion (USD 7.4 billion) in 2005.

SINOPEC Corp. is a Chinese company listed in Hong Kong, New York, London and Shanghai. The company is one of the largest crude oil and petrochemical companies in China and Asia with upstream, midstream and downstream operations. It is also one of the largest gasoline, diesel and jet fuel and other major chemical products producers and distributors in China and Asia.