Tuntex to restart PTA this week after shutdown

06 November 2007 03:03  [Source: ICIS news]

NANJING, China (ICIS news)--Taiwan’s Tuntex Petrochemical is expected to restart its 440,000 tonne/year purified terephthalic acid (PTA) plant at Tainan by end of this week, a company source said on Tuesday.

“We shut the line at the end of last month, and the shutdown would last about two weeks,” the source said.

The source did not say if poor economics was a driving force behind the shutdown, but said that “times had been bad for PTA producers” in general.

Tuntex is a relatively small PTA producer in Taiwan.

Like most PTA producers, the company has suffered from squeezed margins or even a lack of margins since last year, as the market goes into overcapacity and tight supply had lifted feedstock paraxylene (PX) costs tremendously.

PX rose to $1,135/tonne CFR (cost and freight) Taiwan and above this week, from about $1,050-1,060/tonne at end-September, while PTA prices fell to $825-830/tonne CFR China from about $840-850/tonne.

By: Salmon Aidan Lee
+65 6780 4359

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