Taiwan’s FPC sets first-half Sept shutdown for chlor-alkali, vinyl units

25 August 2011 09:37  [Source: ICIS news]

SINGAPORE (ICIS)--Taiwan’s Formosa Plastics Corp (FPC) plans to shut its chlor-alkali and vinyl facilities in Mailiao for roughly two weeks of maintenance in the first half of September, sources close to the company said on Thursday.

The plants include a 1.18m tonne/year ethylene dichloride (EDC) unit, an 800,000 tonne/year vinyl chloride monomer (VCM) unit, a 500,000 tonne/year polyvinyl chloride (PVC) unit and a caustic soda unit with a total capacity of 1.33m tonnes/year.

“However, the turnaround still depends on the local government’s decision so we are not sure whether there would be some changes,” one of the sources added.

The chlor-alkali and vinyl plants are currently operating at around 50-60% and FPC does not have any official EDC offers for the time being, a source said.

Meanwhile, FPC announced its September benchmark offer for PVC at $1,120/tonne (€773/tonne) to China on 17 August.

However, sluggish demand in China as well as the uncertainty in the economic outlook resulted in the majority of buyers adopting a wait-and-see approach, hampering trades, market sources said.

($1 = €0.69)

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By: Maggie Zhu & Feliana Widjaja
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