Despite Kuokuang, expansion plans of other projects to be on stream
03 May '11
2 min read
Several southern Taiwan based downstream petrochemical firms are still positively looking forward to capacity expansion, with a total investment of around NT$30 billion. This is despite termination of Kuokuang petrochemical project.
Grand Pacific Petrochemical, China Man-Made Fiber, Taiwan Styrene Monomer, Asia Polymer and Oriental Union Chemical are all amongst the firms eager to expand their capacities. If they manage to obtain materials supply from CPC Taiwan, these firms are likely to start their new plants by 2013.
The firms are likely to obtain inputs for their new expanded facilities from CPC Taiwan's sixth naphtha cracker.
The sixth naphtha cracker which came up with an investment of NT$46.9 billion, houses a production capacity of 800,000 metric tons of ethylene per annum, which is 500,000 metric tons above the third naphtha cracker's capacity of 230,000 metric tons.
The firms propose to test run the new expanded facilities during second part of 2012, and to officially inaugurate the same in 2013.
A majority of these firms do not hold any investments in Kuokuang Petrochemical Technology Co., Ltd., and hence termination of the Kuokuang project would not have any bearing on them. Rather, they have been much relieved by termination of the project, as competition has reduced. Like for instance, Asia Polymer has accelerated the process of setting up an EVA plant with capacity of 120,000 metric tons per annum.
A CPC Taiwan official confirmed that, the downstream petrochemical firms have recently requested CPC to reconfirm their earlier promise of enhancing ethylene supply in future, so that they can proceed with their expansion plans.
Editor's note –
It is pertinent to note here that, despite the setback to the Kuokuang petrochemical project, other petrochemical projects have not backed out from their commitments, which bodes well for the Taiwanese and also the Asian petrochemical sector.
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