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Located in Sarnia-Lambton's Chemical Valley,
about 180 miles (288 kilometers) west of Toronto, NOVA Chemicals' Sarnia site supplies styrene
to NOVA Chemicals' Montréal, Québec, and Springfield, Massachusetts, polystyrene operations as well as other commercial operations in North America and Europe.

The Sarnia facility had been operating since 1977, when NOVA Chemicals purchased the facility in 1988. The first major upgrade took place in 1997 with a construction project that would upgrade the Sarnia Styrene II facility. Installation of new equipment, utilizing state-of-the-art technology in late 1998, increased production capacity to approximately 950 million pounds (430 kilotonnes) of styrene monomer annually.

The ethylene feedstock required for the styrene process arrives at the site by pipeline from NOVA Chemicals' nearby Corunna site, as does most of the second feedstock, benzene. Other third-party producers in the area also supply benzene to NOVA Chemicals' Sarnia site.

Styrene is manufactured in a two-stage process. First benzene and ethylene are reacted to form ethylbenzene. Ethylbenzene is then dehydrogenated to form styrene.

Styrene is the raw material used to manufacture polystyrene, a common plastic used in the manufacture of food containers and utensils, medical devices, toys and compact disc cases.

The plant has approximately
100 employees. The facility is
ISO 9001:2000 registered.