Honeywell International Inc.’s plant expansion in Baton Rouge has been approved for an exemption from paying millions of dollars in property taxes.
An $8.4 million, 10-year Industrial Tax Exemption Program break received initial approval by the East Baton Rouge Parish Metro Council and School Board on April 24, and final unanimous approval was granted on May 23.
The expansion at Honeywell’s Lupin Avenue plant, known as “Project Zeus 2.0,” will generate at least 13 jobs and $72.5 million in CAPEX, doubling the capacity of the existing plant and purification of approximately 6M pounds of Zeus material to comply with pharmaceutical grade specifications for inhalers for asthma patients.
These innovative products will be the first to market with anticipated potential future growth opportunities to meet global demand.
The expansion includes adding a circulating hot oil reactor; two additional ISO container loading stations; one additional effluent clarifier for managing waste water resulting from the additional production increase and approximately 3,000 feet of pipe, among other additions.
The company plans to add another seven positions at an annual salary of $65,000. The positions include process technicians, lab analysts, process engineers and maintenance engineers.
According to the ITEP application, there are currently 139 employees at the Lupin Avenue site, and the Zeus project will generate approximately 125 construction jobs.
Honeywell hopes to begin commercial operation in 2025.
The facility currently takes in raw materials (hydrofluoric acid, chlorine, PCE) and reacts them in a catalytic reactor to produce refrigerants and propellants that are then distilled and purified, blended, and packaged into rail cars, trailers, and cylinders.
Honeywell said those refrigerants and propellants pose a low risk of impact to global warming. Honeywell estimates that the technology the company uses for substitution of high global warming potential (GWP) fluorinated gases (F-gases) with lower GWP alternatives such as the Honeywell Solstice line of products based on hydrofluoro-olefins (HFOs) will have a cumulative impact of mitigating 600 million metric tons of CO2e between 2023 and 2030.
