Balchem and Taminco Announce a Production Joint Venture for Choline Chloride

29 Jan 2014 --- Taminco Corporation and Balchem Corporation have reached an agreement to build and operate a choline chloride facility in St. Gabriel, Louisiana, where both companies operate existing production facilities. Balchem will contribute its current St. Gabriel choline chloride production assets to the Joint Venture and both parties will invest into expanding these assets into a world scale production unit, which is expected to come on stream in 2015.

The Joint Venture will manufacture choline chloride. Balchem and Taminco will market the product through separate and fully independent channels. Both parties are very pleased with the joint production model as this will lead to a state-of-the-art unit, using the most advanced technology, generating advantages of scale and providing customers a high quality product and reliable supply chain at competitive cost.

This new capacity will help to serve the growing North American market, which is underpinned by increasing demand for choline chloride, a quaternary compound functioning as a clay stabilizer in oil and gas drilling and hydraulic fracturing applications. The safe and benign profile of choline chloride contributes to reducing the environmental footprint for oil and gas development projects. Choline Chloride is a trimethyl amine derivative, also widely used as a feed ingredient additive for a variety of animals.