INEOS Phenol and Sinopec Yangzi Petrochemical Company have signed a letter of intent to study and negotiate a joint venture to build and operate a phenol/acetone manufacturing site at the Nanjing Chemical Industrial Park in Jiangsu Province, China.The expected annual capacity of the new facility would be 400,000 tonnes/year of phenol and 250,000 tonnes/year of acetone, making it the largest plant of its kind in China. The company added that facility would include 550,000 tonnes/year of cumene capacity and that it expected the project to be completed in 2013. INEOS expected the facility to serve the growing market for phenol and acetone in China and free capacity at the company’s European and US plants to meet growth in those regions. The company, which is the world's largest producer of phenol and acetone and the only manufacturer with production facilities both in Europe and America, added that the completion of the plant would increase its overall annual capacity to more than 2.3m tonnes of phenol and 1.4m tonnes of acetone.