Sibur to add ethylene capacity to meet JV demand

03 July 2007 17:27  [Source: ICIS news]

LONDON (ICIS news)--Sibur will raise ethylene capacity at its Nizhny Novgorod cracker to 360,000 tonnes/year by 2010 to serve additional demand for ethylene from its vinyls joint venture with the Solvay/BASF venture Solvin, the company said on Tuesday.

 

Ethylene capacity could be taken to 430,000 tonnes/year if the decision to expand PVC (polyvinyl chloride) capacity from the venture to 510,000 tonnes/year is made, said Sibur CEO Dmitry Konov at press briefing in London on Tuesday.

 

The joint venture with Solvin currently envisages 330,000 tonnes/year of polyvinvyl chloride capacity by the end of 2010, of which approximately 10% will be emulsion PVC and the remainder suspension PVC.

 

A next-stage expansion is due to be agreed in 2008, Konov said, which could take PVC capacity to 510,000 tonnes/year by 2012. Again, about 10% of that capacity would be emulsion PVC.

 

PVC demand in Russia is currently 500,000 tonnes/year| but growing at 10-15% a year. Domestic PVC demand growth will slow eventually, he admitted, but remain at a low double-digit rate.

 

Polyethylene (PE) and polypropylene (PP) demand has also risen strongly in Russia over the past five years and Konov said there was a “huge base” for further growth.

 

Sibur is adding 500,000 tonnes/year of PP capacity at Tobolsk with the project alongside an associated propane dehydrogenation (PDH) unit which is in the engineering phase.

 

"Our aim is to put it on-stream by the end of 2010,” Konov said.

 

The second phase of Sibur’s plans for polymers at Tobolsk, which will add further olefins PE and PP capacity, should be in place by 2013, he said.

 

The company’s Orenburg I project is similar to Tobolsk I and will come on stream in 2012, Konov said. However, the second phase of development at Orenburg will not materialise before 2015.

By: Nigel Davis
+44 20 8652 3214

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