Restart of Polimeri's Dunkirk PE plants delayed by a week

02 December 2011 14:49  [Source: ICIS news]

LONDON (ICIS)--The restart of polyethylene (PE) plants at Polimeri Europa’s site in Dunkirk, northern France, has been delayed by a week, a company source said on Friday.

“We were supposed to start up on Monday, unfortunately there has been a delay,” said the source at the Italian petrochemical company. “We hope to start both LDPE and LLDPE [plants] by next Monday.”

Milan-based Polimeri Europa has a 200,000 tonne/year low density polyethylene (LDPE) unit and a 140,000tonne/year linear low density polyethylene (LLDPE) plant at Dunkirk.

Meanwhile, Polimeri's cracker at Dunkirk will be back onstream over the weekend of 3–4 December.

Production at the LDPE and LLDPE plants was brought to a halt following an unexpected shutdown of the cracker on 23 October.

Despite the outage, the company has been able to serve its customers needs as supply continues to outstrip demand in Europe for both LDPE and LLDPE, despite some recent production cutbacks in the region.

LDPE spot prices were at €1,030-1,090/tonne FD (free delivered) NWE (northwest Europe) for the week ending on 25 November. LLDPE C4 spot prices were at €1,000-1,040/tonne FD NWE.
 
Polimeri Europa is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Eni, the Italian oil and gas major.

LDPE and LLDPE are widely used in the packaging and agricultural sectors.

($1 = 0.74) 

For more on PE visit ICIS chemical intelligence

 

By: Cuckoo James
+44 (0) 208 652 3214

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