Celanese cuts output at Nanjing acetic acid unit

13 March 2008 10:01  [Source: ICIS news]

SINGAPORE (ICIS news)--Global acetyls producer Celanese is running its 600,000 tonne/year acetic acid plant in Nanjing, China, at 70% capacity this week following a two-day outage last weekend, sources close to the company said on Thursday.

  

Production at the plant was down 20% from early March levels, the sources said, adding that they did not know what caused the outage. Company officials were also not available for comment.

 

“We understand that they are only supplying to big-scale end-users in China due to the lowered operating rate and the outage, and they are still fulfilling their February bookings now,” an eastern China-based domestic producer said in Mandarin.

 

The outage at the Celanese plant was expected to underpin spot prices, which have been on a rebound recently due to improved demand from the downstream purified terephthalic acid (PTA) and ethyl acetate sectors. 

 

In the Chinese domestic market, local acetic acid producers raised priced for a third consecutive week to yuan (CNY) 5,550-5,700/tonne ($792-804/tonne) ex-tank in east China, up CNY100/tonne from last week’s levels due to buoyant demand.

 

($1 = CNY 7.10)

 

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By: Helen Lee
+65 6780 4359

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