WBR catalyst project grows

• By GARY LANEY
• Advocate business writer
• Published: Nov 10, 2009 - Page: 6B

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Criterion Catalysts, which forecasts hiring 90 people at its Port Allen facility, will shift production from a California facility when the Louisiana site begins full production next year on La. 1.

It’s an expansion of a project that has continued to grow since the Houston-based company bought the former Alcoa site for $18 million more than two years ago.

Then, Criterion forecast a $150 million project that would reconfigure the site for making catalysts that help refineries break down crude oil and remove heavy metals for cleaner-burning fuel.

While demand for the catalysts continues to grow, the growth rate has slowed. That development made concentrating more assets in an integrated Port Allen facility cost-effective for Criterion Catalysts & Technologies LP, company officials said.

“I think the strategy and the vision for the site really hasn’t changed,” said Bill Howell, Criterion’s venture manager for the Port Allen facilities. “But with the world economics, we’ve been able to accelerate what we’re doing and surely Port Allen will be the flagship of our company, once it’s up and running.”

The catalyst plant will be mechanically complete by February and be ready for commercial operation by May, he said. A third-party vendor, USALCO, already delivers a sodium aluminate and alum mix to Criterion’s alumina plant, which opened in April at the 67-acre Port Allen site.

Alumina, the key ingredient for the catalysts, is being shipped by rail to the West Coast. When Criterion finishes the catalyst plant under construction on La. 1 now, the company will close an Azusa, Calif., plant and shift that production to Port Allen.

Criterion kept an original 17 Alcoa employees and will increase that staff to 80 by early next year, up from an original projection of 70, Howell said.

Another five people work for USALCO, and five more will work for Jacobson Cos., a third-party logistics company based in Iowa that also serves Dow Chemical Co. in Plaquemine. Criterion is building a 50,000-square-foot warehouse to be completed by year’s end, Howell said. Jacobson will operate that facility and be the primary shipper of finished catalysts, which are shipped as pellets in bags or bins.

Criterion declined to identify how much production will shift from California or what the total capacity of the Port Allen facility will be, but Port Allen will be “about three times as big, in terms of output, as any facility we have,” Howell said.

The company operates a half-dozen hydroprocessing catalyst plants, in addition to other catalyst plants, and serves customers worldwide, he said.

The parent company of Criterion Catalysts & Technologies LP — CRI/Criterion Inc. — is a wholly owned subsidiary of Royal Dutch Shell, the world’s No. 2 private oil and gas company behind Exxon Mobil.

Last year, the state-operated Louisiana Economic Development Corp. awarded $1.2 million for a water well project that will aid Criterion’s project in a part of the parish where water demand is up. Placid Refinery also is completing a roughly $300 million expansion nearby.