Venezuela Polinter to triple PE production

28 August 2008 01:52  [Source: ICIS news]

CARACAS (ICIS news)--Venezuela's state-chemical producer expects to nearly triple its polyethylene (PE) production next year, according to a statement released on Wednesday.

Pequiven said that PE capacity at the Ana Maria Campos petrochemical complex will jump to 1m tonnes/year in 2009 from its current 360,000 tonnes/year.

Production of linear low density polyethylene (LLDPE) will rise to 240,000 tonnes/year from 180,000 tonnes/year as a butane feedstock unit comes online, which will allow the producer to substitute imported feedstocks with local raw material.

The plant, run by Polinter, a local subsidiary of Pequiven, recently completed expansion of some its existing units that boosted production of high density polyethylene (HDPE) to 160,000 tonnes/year from 100,000 tonnes/year. The work took eight months to complete.

Polinter's plant now has three PE units, producing 160,000 tonnes/year of HDPE, 80,000 tonnes/year of low density polyethylene (LDPE) and 180,000 tonnes/year of LLDPE.

The long-term plan to increase PE production also includes the Olefins 3 project, currently in design stages, to build three new plants at the Jose Antonio Anzoategui complex. That work will add 300,000 tonnes/year of high and low density PE and 1m tonnes/year of olefins by the second half of 2011.

The expansion work is part of a, multi-billion dollar plan to boost Venezuela's overall production of plastic resins to 2m tonnes/year from its current level of 600,000 tonnes/year by 2012, Pequiven president Saul Ameliach said recently.

According to the release, demand for plastic resins has jumped 81% since 2002 and has required the one-time resins exporter to rely on imports of PE, polypropylene (PP) and polyvinyl chloride (PVC) to supply local transformers.

Separately, the release also noted that a recently inaugurated Petrocasa plant, located in the western state of Zulia near the Ana Campos complex, will require 32,000 tonnes/year of PVC.

PVC markets have been largely described as well-supplied but the government's programme to build low-cost, plastic homes, referred to locally as the Petrocasa initiative, is rapidly eating into that market's spare capacity.

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By: Jasmina Kelemen
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