China’s Hubei Biocause builds methanol, DME units

18 July 2008 05:26  [Source: ICIS news]

SINGAPORE (ICIS news)--China-based Hubei Biocause Pharmaceutical Co is building a methanol plant and a dimethyl ether (DME) unit, each with a capacity of 200,000 tonnes/year at Jingmen city in central Hubei province, a company source said on Friday.

"We have already started construction works on the two new plants. The DME unit will come on-stream late this year," the source said in Mandarin, adding that the methanol unit would take ten more months to be completed.

The unit was the third phase of a 1m tonne/year DME plant. The first phase of the project was completed in April 2007 with the start-up of a 100,000 tonne/year unit, while a 200,000 tonne/year unit was brought on-stream in June this year as part of the second phase.

The company had invested yuan (CNY)517.2m ($75.8m) in building the second and third DME units and its outlay for the new methanol plant was around CNY950m, the source said but did not provide financial details regarding the first DME line.

($1 = CNY 6.82)

Judith Wang contributed to this article
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By: Brian Myung
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