Known as the Thai Growth Project, the expansion encompasses five new plants and their integration with existing production units into a fully integrated complex of world-class downstream facilities - Dow’s largest manufacturing site in the Asia Pacific region.

All the facilities were commissioned and completed safely and successfully on-time and within budget, and with what is thought to be the best safety record ever achieved in the petrochemical industry – 41 million man-hours with no lost time to injury.

The new plants were officially opened in March 2012 and include a new hydrogen peroxide plant, which is the largest in the world.
n addition to the five core projects, Dow has also invested in a new storage and export facility at the nearby port of Map Ta Phut. Three of the new plants are a joint venture with Dow’s Thailand partner, Siam Cement Group. The new hydrogen peroxide plant is a joint venture with Solvay.

ABB was one of Dow’s principal partners and largest suppliers in the project, providing and installing most of the electrical and automation equipment, including the plant distributed control systems.

"ABB was one of our key partners during the implementation of this ambitious program," said Ron Huijsmans, Dow’s project director for the Thai Growth Project. "In fact, except for our main construction contractor, ABB was the largest supplier of materials, equipment and services. They supplied most of our switchgear, transformers, motors and drives, all of our analytical equipment, all distributed control system hardware and most of the related programming services and, last but not least, most of the electrical and instrumentation installation work."

'Vision of zero'
What is remarkable about the Thai Growth Project is that it was accomplished with an outstanding record in environment, health and safety issues (EH&S). This is a result of Dow’s well-known commitment to EH&S and its 'Vision of Zero' policy of zero incidents, injuries, illnesses, accidents and environmental harm.

ABB played an exemplary role in helping establish this benchmark, and was three times awarded the Contractors Monthly Safety Award for its EH&S achievements. ABB expended a total of 2.6 million man-hours on the project with a 100-percent safety record and zero lost time to injury.

Dow’s investment in the Thai Growth Project continues. A new propylene glycol plant is currently under construction and scheduled for completion later this year. ABB is providing the distributed control system and much of the electrical equipment, instrumentation and analyzers, including installation and commissioning.