Taiwan's Nan Ya to shut two MEG units in Sept on lack of ethylene

31 August 2010 12:11  [Source: ICIS news]

SINGAPORE (ICIS)--Taiwan’s Nan Ya Plastics Corp plans to shut two of its monoethylene glycol (MEG) units at Mailiao in September due to a lack of feedstock ethylene, a company source said on Monday.

The units have a combined capacity of 750,000 tonnes/year.

Nan Ya relies on feedstock ethylene supply from its parent company, Formosa Petrochemical Corp (FPC), whose 700,000 tonne/year No 1 cracker was expected to be restarted on 1 October following an outage since an explosion on 7 July.

Nan Ya’s 350,000 tonne/year No 1 unit was expected to come offline on 1 September, possibly for more than one month, the source said.

Its 400,000 tonne/year No 2 unit at the same site would also be shut down in September. The company had initially planned a 45-day shutdown at the unit in line with the scheduled maintenance at Formosa’s 1.03m tonne/year No 2 cracker.

No exact date has been set for the shutdown of the No 2 unit, because “it will depend on how long our stock ethylene could last for. It could be within two weeks,” according to the source.

“We failed to secure a large volume of spot ethylene due to its current high prices. This has exacerbated the supply shortage,” the source added.

Nan Ya runs four MEG units at Mailiao. A maintenance shutdown at its 350,000 tonne/year No 3 unit was completed on 14 August. Its 700,000 tonne/year No 4 unit is running at full rates.

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By: Becky Zhang
+65 6780 4359

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