Iran’s Tabriz Petrochemical runs PS facility at full tilt

SINGAPORE (ICIS)--Iran's sole polystyrene (PS) producer, Tabriz Petrochemical, is running its facility at 100% capacity on the back of healthy domestic demand, a company source said on Tuesday.

According to the company, there are no plans to shut the facility for maintenance this year, as it had a turnaround last year.

The PS facility is located at Tabriz city in northwest Iran and includes a 25,000 tonne/year general purpose PS (GPPS) unit, two high impact PS (HIPS) lines that have a capacity of 40,000 tonnes/year and 54,000 tonnes/year respectively, and a 15,000 tonne/year expandable PS (EPS) unit, the source said.

“The production here is not enough to meet the demand. That is why we can’t export and imports are still attractive at the moment,” he said, adding that Tabriz Petrochemical has no expansion plans for the next two to three years.

“A local styrene monomer (SM) producer is in the planning stage of setting up a PS unit, but nothing is firm yet,” he added.