South Korea’s Sam Nam to shut all PTA/QTA units in April

30 March 2009 02:43  [Source: ICIS news]

SINGAPORE (ICIS news)--South Korea’s Sam Nam Petrochemical will shut all of its four terephthalic acid units at Yeocheon next week for a two-week maintenance, coinciding with a shutdown of a power station in the industrial park, company sources said late on Sunday.

“The power company supplying to the petrochemical plants at Yeocheon will have a maintenance shutdown in early April for two weeks, so we’d shut down together with them,” said one of the sources.

Sam Nam produces 1.8m tonnes/year of terephthalic acid at Yeocheon. Out of its total production 300,000 tonnes/year is purified terephthalic acid (PTA) while the rest is qualified terephthalic acid (QTA), generally considered a less-pure form of PTA.

The company said in January this year that it was trying to minimize the shutdown period in April to no more than two weeks.

“We’d see very tight [supply] in April as a result of our total shutdown, but contract customers should still get most of their volumes,” said another source.

Sam Nam is one of the largest producers of the fibre intermediate in Asia. It is a joint venture of Japan’s Mitsubishi Chemical (40%), South Korea’s Samyang Petrochemical (40%) and GS-Caltex Oil (20%).

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By: Salmon Aidan Lee
+65 6780 4359

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