Borouge upbeat on China, targets 650kt/yr polyolefins sales

06 January 2010 14:01  [Source: ICIS news]

GUANGZHOU (ICIS news)--Borouge is upbeat on China despite new competing capacities coming online there, a senior executive at the Abu Dhabi-based company said on Wednesday.

“We are committed to [the] China market and will continue to invest in speeding up the innovation process and providing optimum solutions to our customers in China,” said William Yao, CEO of Borouge’s sales and marketing arm, on the sidelines of the inauguration ceremony of Borouge Sales and Marketing (Guangzhou) Co in southern China’s Guangdong province.

“Borouge has the target to sell 650,000 tonnes/year of polyolefins in China by 2012 and 1.4m tonnes/year by 2015,” Yao said.

Citing the fast-growing automotive industry, he added: “China will be the world’s biggest polyolefins market with demand growing to 43m tonnes per year by 2015.

“Despite big production capacity in China itself, Borouge will differentiate from competitors by focusing on high-end and high value-added products.

“China’s rapid growth of automotive market last year has proven that Borouge made a right decision. China’s car sales increased 44% last year to more than 13m units and there’s still a big potential compared to developed countries. We’re conservatively upbeat on this year’s market,” he said.

Borouge’s 50,000 tonne/year compounding plant at Shanghai would begin operations in April this year and its plastics solutions Application Center at the same site would be online by the end of this year, the company said in a news release.

Meanwhile, the company’s two logistic hubs in China - a 600,000 tonne/year facility at Shanghai and a 246,000 tonne/year facility at Guangzhou - would also begin operations at the end of the year, the release said.

The Borouge 2 project, which includes a 1.5m tonne/year ethane cracker, a 800,000 tonne/year polypropylene (PP) plant and a 540,000 tonne/year polyethylene (PE) unit at Ruwais, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, would come on stream in May or June this year as scheduled, Yao said.

Borouge is a joint venture between the Abu Dhabi National Oil Co and Austria-based Borealis.

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By: Fanny Zhang
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