Formosa keeps EDC capacity despite new cracker

16 March 2007 06:36  [Source: ICIS news]

SINGAPORE (ICIS news)--Formosa Petrochemical Corp (FPC) will not increase its ethylene dichloride (EDC) capacity after the startup of the new upstream No 3 cracker in Mailiao and increase in available feedstock, a company source said on Friday.

Production at FPC’s 1m tonne/year EDC plant in Mailiao has not been slated for expansion even after Asia’s largest C2 cracker, Formosa No 3, starts commissioning in April.

The 1.2m tonne/year cracker project was earlier scheduled to start up at end-2006, but was delayed to the second quarter of this year due to a labour shortage and problems with securing construction materials.

If the new Formosa No 3 cracker results in an increase in EDC capacity, that would help ease the regional shortfall now being addressed by imports of deep-sea cargoes from south America, the US and the Middle East.

“As our caustic soda production requires stable output, there won’t be any EDC capacity increase,” said the company source.

Downstream projects which will come up in line with the new cracker include a 700,000 tonne/year styrene monomer (SM) unit at Formosa Chemicals and Fibre Corp (FCFC) and Nan Ya Plastics’ monoethylene glycol (MEG) and bisphenol-A (BPA) projects.

By: Yao Wang
+65 6780 4359

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