Press Release

Kraton Polymers Announces
Global Capacity Expansion at Plants
in U.S. & Europe

HOUSTON (March 28, 2005) Kraton Polymers is increasing production capability for Kraton G polymers at its Belpre, Ohio, and Berre, France, plants in response to rising demand from customers in the adhesives, compounding, packaging, and polymer modification sectors.

The Company is implementing capacity increases for Kraton G polymers by nearly 10 kt. These debottlenecks are a series of low cost capital investments, which will primarily allow capacity growth to support the global growth in our important market segments.

Kraton polymers are a range of versatile, high-performance materials. They offer a variety of processing and application advantages, such as increased processing stability, oxidation, and weather resistance, high temperature performance and soft-touch over-molding. Kraton Polymers, the market leader in styrene-ethylene-butylene-styrene (SEBS) products and styrene-ethylene-propylene-styrene (SEPS) products, commercialized the first grades of these products in 1972. Consumer goods, automotive parts, rigid and flexible packaging materials, roofing materials, sealants, and polymer modification are among the diverse applications that can benefit from Kraton G polymers.

About Kraton

Kraton Polymers LLC is a premier, global specialty chemicals company and is the world’s largest producer of styrenic block copolymers (“SBCs”), a family of products whose chemistry was pioneered by Kraton over forty years ago.  SBCs are highly-engineered synthetic elastomers, which enhance the performance of products by delivering a variety of attributes, including greater flexibility, resilience, strength, durability and processability.  Kraton polymers are used in a wide range of applications including road and roofing materials, numerous consumer products (e.g., diapers, tool handles and toothbrushes), tapes, labels, medical applications, packaging, automotive and footwear products.  Kraton has the leading position in nearly all of its core markets and is the only producer of SBCs with global manufacturing capability.  Its production facilities are located in the United States, The Netherlands, Germany, France, Brazil, and Japan.

Polymer Holdings LLC is the parent company of Kraton Polymers LLC and has no material assets other than its investment in Kraton Polymers LLC. 

Kraton, the Kraton logo and design are trademarks of Kraton Polymers LLC.

Forward Looking Statements

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