Equipolymers struggles with German and Italian PET output

23 June 2010 16:43  [Source: ICIS news]

LONDON (ICIS news)--Equipolymers is still operating below capacity at its Schkopau, Germany, polyethylene terephthalate (PET) plant due to ongoing technical problems after its restart following a brief shutdown earlier this month, a company source said on Wednesday.

“We hope to have prime product by next Monday,” the source said.

The plant, which has a capacity of 335,000 tonne/year according to ICIS data, went down unexpectedly in early June because of a power outage.

Another Equipolymers’ facility, a 170,000 tonne/year plant in Ottana, Sardinia, was also forced to close for a few days earlier this month following a power outage. The Italian site was only operating at half its capacity, however, due to a lack of feedstock.

The plant’s supplier of upstream paraxylene (PX) experienced a shutdown in May and this caused the purified terephthalic acid (PTA) line to also close down, leading to a lack of raw material for PET production, the source explained.

Equipolymers is a 50-50 joint venture between Dow Chemical and the Petrochemical Industries Co (PIC) of Kuwait.

Wednesday saw the restart of Indorama’s Dutch PET and PTA plants in Rotterdam, following a scheduled shutdown since 10 June. The PET unit has a nameplate capacity of  200,000 tonne/year, while the PTA unit can produce up to 350,000 tonne/year.

Novapet confirmed that its 130,000 tonne/year line at its Spanish PET plant in Barbastro, Huesca, would definitely shut down on Thursday for around five weeks.

($1 = €0.81)

ICIS is launching a Polyethylene Terephthalate (Middle East) report on 8 July. Please contact Nadine Spoeri (nadine.spoeri@icis.com) for more information.

For more on PET, PTA visit ICIS chemical intelligence
For more on Indorama, Novapet visit ICIS company intelligence
Please visit the complete ICIS plants and projects database
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