Japan’s Mitsui Chem runs Chiba phenol-acetone unit at 80%

SINGAPORE (ICIS news)--Japanese producer Mitsui Chemicals has been running its phenol-acetone plant in Chiba at 80% of capacity after it was restarted last week due to tight supply of feedstock propylene, a company source said on Monday.

The plant, which can produce 190,000 tonnes/year of phenol and 114,000 tonnes/year of acetone, was taken off line on 1 March as an outage at its upstream cracker facility affected its propylene supply, the source said.

The cracker was scheduled to resume operation by the end of the month, the source said, adding that the company would ramp up production at the Chiba phenol-acetone plant by then.

Mitsui Chemicals’ other plant at Chiba, which is a joint venture with Idemitsu Kosan , has a nameplate capacity of 230,000 tonnes/year of phenol and 80,000 tonnes/year of acetone.

The plant was shut on 10 March for a scheduled turnaround, and would remain off line until 13 May, the source said.

Mitsui Chemicals is the largest phenol-acetone producer in Asia.