South Korea exports 30% less ethylene in May

24 June 2008 07:18  [Source: ICIS news]

SINGAPORE (ICIS news)--Ethylene exports from South Korea fell more than 30% in May compared with April volumes, statistics from Korea International Trade Association (KITA) showed on Tuesday.

South Korea exported 47,177 tonnes of ethylene in May, representing a 30.26% decline from 67,652 tonnes in April.

"The sharp decrease in Korea’s ethylene exports is because of the series of shutdowns at Yeochun Naphtha Cracking Center’s (YNCC) crackers," a trader said, referring to the power outage, which forced YNCC to shut down all three of its crackers.

This was made worse by the fact that Lotte Daesan had faced problems restarting its ethylene cracker after an expansion to 1m tonnes/year.

China, a big importer of South Korean ethylene, reduced its May purchase by 36% from April figures to 30,577 tonnes.

This was somewhat offset by the increased imports in May by Japan, which rose 21% due to the heavy turnaround period in Japan with three crackers shut down for maintenance simultaneously in May.

South Korea is one of the largest ethylene producing countries in Asia with a combined production capacity of more than 6.7m tonnes/year.

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By: Brian Myung
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