Construction begins on $1.1b glass project in China

Construction began Tuesday on a soda ash project with an investment of $1.14 billion from Taiwan Glass Group in Huai'an, the Chinese mainland's Jiangsu province.

The group aims to ensure supplies of soda ash, a main raw material for glass, by exploiting rich resources in Huai'an, said an official with the Huai'an economic development zone, where the project is.

The first phase of the project, with an investment of 600 million yuan ($87.8 million), is scheduled to start production in 2011, with annual business income of three billion yuan.

It will have a production capacity of one million tons of soda ash, one million tons of ammonium chloride.

The group, founded in 1964, began its investment on the mainland in 1993. It has set up plants in Kunshan in Jiangsu province, Qingdao in Shandong province and Chengdu in Sichuan province.

The group produced nearly 2.7 million tons of glass last year.

Source: BizChina