BASF announced it will construct a world-scale chelating agent manufacturing plant near Mobile, Ala. The $90 million BASF chelating agent plant will be built at Evonik Industries’ specialty chemicals facility in Theodore and is expected to start up in the second half of 2015. BASF currently produces its Trilon M chelating agent — a detergent additive marketed as an alternative to phosphates — at its Ludwigshafen, Germany, site. The BASF chelating agent plant in Alabama will free up capacity at the German site, which is seeing increased demand for the product driven by impending regulations on phosphates in detergents.