Sasol to turn around S African acrylates plant

01 May 2008 22:50  [Source: ICIS news]

HOUSTON (ICIS news)--Sasol's Sasolburg acrylates plant in South Africa, which supplies the US market, is scheduled to go offline this week for a 40-day turnaround, a company source said on Thursday.

Sasol's plant produces 80,000 tonnes/year of butyl acrylate (butyl-A) and 35,000 tonnes/year of ethyl acrylate (ethyl-A).

During the plant's down time, Sasol will supply acrylates to its customers from an inventory build that began in advance of the outage, the source said.

While the plant is out, the company will perform a catalyst change, the source said.

Supplies of butyl-A have tightened due to recent turnarounds and some delayed restarts of feedstock n-butanol (NBA) plants in the US.

BASF's 210,000 tonne/year NBA plant in Freeport, Texas, came back online this week after a month of planned maintenance.

NBA restarts have been delayed at Dow Chemical's plant in Taft, Louisiana ,and Oxea's plant in Baytown, Texas.

"We're fairly snug in [butyl-A]," the source said. "And we've seen increasing interest in [butyl-A] from the marketplace, probably due to the outages."

Several butyl-A producers have proposed second-quarter price increases of 4-5 cents/lb ($88-110/tonne) (€56-70/tonne), according to global chemical market intelligence service ICIS pricing.

On 30 May, one settlement was confirmed at plus 2 cents/lb.

($1 = €0.64)

For more on Sasol's Sasolburg plant, visit ICIS plants and projects

By: Larry Terry
1 713 525 2653

For the latest chemical news, data and analysis that directly impacts your business sign up for a free trial to ICIS news - the breaking online news service for the global chemical industry.

Get the facts and analysis behind the headlines from our market leading weekly magazine: sign up to a free trial to ICIS Chemical Business.

Printer Friendly