Russia's Senezh asks government to lift 5% PTA import duty

16 June 2011 11:48  [Source: ICIS news]

MOSCOW (ICIS)--Senezh has asked the Russian government to lift import duty on purified terephthalic acid (PTA), a company source said on Thursday.

Senezh, Russia’s leading producer of bottle-grade polyethylene terephthalate (PET), sent a letter to the Russian economic development ministry requesting it lifts the 5% import duty levied on PET feedstock PTA.

Polyef, Russia’s only PTA producer, is unable to supply sufficient volumes to domestic PET manufacturers, hence the import duty is not needed to protect local PTA production, Senezh said.

Senezh’s PET plant in the Solnechnogorsk district of Moscow has a capacity of 105,000 tonnes/year.

Other PET producers in Russia include Moscow-headquartered Sibur, which operates a 70,000 tonnes/year plant in the Tver region, north of Moscow, and Polyef, based in Blagoveshchensk in the Bashkortostan region, which operates a 120,000 tonnes/year bottle-grade PET plant and 230,000 tonnes/year PTA unit.

In February, Alco-Nafta started production at its 220,000 tonnes/year bottle-grade PET plant in the western enclave of Kaliningrad.

Earlier this year, Sibur and Russian gas giant Gazprom indicated tentative plans to form a joint venture to produce PET and PTA in the Omsk region of Siberia by 2014–2015.

The government is expected to make a final decision on PTA import duty before September.

For more on PET and PTA, visit ICIS chemical intelligence

By: Sergei Blagov
+44 20 8652 3214

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