Taiwan FCFC delays startup of new PTA line
07 January 2008 03:41 [Source: ICIS news]
SINGAPORE (ICIS news)--Taiwan’s Formosa Chemical & Fiber Corp (FCFC) has delayed bringing onstream its new, 400,000 tonne/year purified terephthalic acid (PTA)-purified isophthalic acid (PIA) swing line to around June this year, sources close to the company said on Monday.
No specific date has been fixed since the project at Loong-der in Ilan county started construction, but FCFC sources had earlier said that startup could happen in early 2008, while sources close to the company said late last year that the plant would start “only towards the end of the first quarter [of 2008]”.
“As far as we understand, the startup has now been pushed to around June, the middle of this year,” said one of the sources, who could not say why there had been a delay.
“It’s obvious that with the PTA market now so difficult, [FCFC] would be reluctant to add new capacities and spoil the market further,” said another source.
FCFC officials could not confirm the alleged delay. One of them would only say that “works have been carried out since we started construction and we’ve not been told of any other new developments since then.”
Like most PTA producers, FCFC has been suffering squeezed or no margins from PTA sales every now and then since 2006.
For example, the contract price of December paraxylene was at $1,100/tonne (€748/tonne) CFR (cost and freight)
FCFC operates another 600,000 tonne/year PTA unit at Loong-der, as well as two other lines at Mailiao in the south of
($1 = €0.68)
By: Salmon Aidan Lee
+65 6780 4359
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