China’s Jiangsu Sopo may delay new VAM plant start-up to end-‘14

15 May 2012 08:14  [Source: ICIS news]

SINGAPORE (ICIS)--China’s Jiangsu Sopo may delay a planned start-up of its new 330,000 tonne/year vinyl acetate monomer (VAM) plant in Zhenjiang, Jiangsu province, to the end of 2014 from 2013, a company official said on Tuesday.

“We may have to delay the [start-up] target schedule by two years – to the end of 2014 – because of difficulties in securing credit, inefficiencies in our production processes and poor market conditions in the upstream acetic acid market,” the official said.

The ground works, design and other basic processes for the new VAM plant are in place at the company’s Zhenjiang production site, where it also operates a 500,000 tonne/year methanol unit, a 500,000 tonne/year ethyl acetate facility and a 1.2m tonne/year acetic acid plant.  

VAM is used to produce a wide variety of products including adhesives, chemical intermediates, coatings, plastics, textiles and food.

Other major VAM producers in the Asian market include US-based Celanese, China’s Sichuan Vinylon Works, Japan VAM & Poval, South Korea’s Asacco, Taiwan’s Dairen Chemical Corp and Saudi Arabia’s International Vinyl Acetate Company (IVC).

By: Helen Lee
+65 6780 4359

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