Nynas AB of Sweden has completed its takeover of Royal Dutch Shell PLC’s former Harburg refining assets in Hamburg, Germany, to operate as a specialty lubricants refinery.
Nynas, which initially assumed operations of the refinery’s base oil manufacturing plant and crude distillation unit (CDU) in the site’s northern sector from Shell Deutschland Oil GMBH in January 2014, will use the refinery to produce as much as 330,000 tonnes/year of specialty oils and bitumen for sale to Europe, the company said.
Currently undergoing a conversion and upgrade, the refinery’s CDU is scheduled for restart during spring 2016.
A new bitumen truck-loading terminal due to be operational by midyear will complete a series of planned improvements to the refinery’s infrastructure, Nynas said.
The final transfer of Harburg operations to Nynas follows the European Commission’s September 2013 approval of the transaction to prevent shortfalls in production of certain oil products for Europe after Shell demonstrated that it was no longer economically sustainable to operate the refinery in its former configuration, which would have led to its complete shutdown (OGJ Online, Sept. 3, 2013).
Shell will continue to operate the remainder of the Harburg site.
Contact Robert Brelsford at [email protected].