China's Fushun p-wax facility may restart end-Feb

04 February 2010 04:03  [Source: ICIS news]

SINGAPORE (ICIS news)--PetroChina's subsidiary Fushun Petrochemical - the largest paraffin wax (p-wax) facility in China – will keep its two plants of 330,000 tonne/year total capacity in Liaoning province offline until late February, sources said on Thursday.

The company experienced an outage around 10-20 days ago due to a failure at its hydrogenation units and the plants could not produce wax, buyers said.

The company runs a 250,000 tonne/year p-wax plant and a smaller unit with an 80,000 tonne/year capacity in the city of Fushun in Liaoning province.

A major trader said that the problem should be resolved by end February but the company declined to comment.

Buyers and sellers attributed Fushun’s non production as part of the reasons for the tight supply and increase in prices.

Paraffin wax prices had increased $40/tonne (€29/tonne) in the key China market since mid-January at $1,440-1,500/tonne (€1,037-1,080) FOB (free on board) China Main Port (CMP) for the benchmark fully-refined 58/60ºC solid paraffin wax this week, according to global chemical market intelligence service ICIS pricing.

Other regional producers of paraffin wax include Sinopec and Taiwan Wax Co.

($1 = €0.72)

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By: Heng Hui
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