Taiwan’s Nan Ya starts 45-day safety checks at Chiayi plants

06 October 2010 07:06  [Source: ICIS news]

By Nurluqman Suratman

SINGAPORE (ICIS)--Nan Ya Plastics, an affiliate of Taiwan’s petrochemical giant Formosa Plastics, launched on Wednesday comprehensive safety checks of its facilities in Chiayi county after Sunday’s fire damaged its 48,000 tonne/year synthetic paper plant.

“We have started to look at all the machinery in detail to see if there is anything that needs to be maintained or replaced,” said company spokesperson David Tsou, adding that the whole process would take 45 days to complete.

Inspections would be conducted at Nan Ya’s 174,000 tonne/year polyvinyl chloride (PVC) pipe plant, its 56,400 tonne/year PVC sheeting facility and its construction materials plant in the county in southern Taiwan, Tsou said.

The plants would continue operating during the safety checks, he said.

The move was meant to prevent a similar incident on 3 October, when a 17-hour blaze damaged Nan Ya’s synthetic paper plant and razed a warehouse, he said.

Meanwhile, the company was still assessing the damages wrought by the fire, while investigations were ongoing on what caused it, he said.

“The company is still working with the insurance company to see how much the fire would cost us,” Tsou said.

Nan Ya expected its synthetic paper plant to be down for at least a year, pegging its monthly revenue loss at New Taiwan dollars (NT$) 150m.

The Chiayi plant fire occurred after two similar incidents hit the Mailiao complex of Nan Ya’s sister company Formosa Petrochemical in July.

These successive incidents had some people worried about safety procedures at the group’s plants, according to an analyst and an industry official.

Formosa group chairman Wang Wen-yuan had apologised to Chiayi residents, who were demanding compensation for the Nan Ya fire, according to media reports.

A compensation package to county residents was being hammered out between Nan Ya and the local government, Tsou said.

Read John Richardson and Malini Hariharan’s blog – Asian Chemical Connections
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By: Nurluqman Suratman

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