Ningbo restarts PTA plant after 10-day shutdown

26 July 2007 16:47  [Source: ICIS news]

SINGAPORE (ICIS news)--Ningbo Mitsubishi Chemical (NMC) restarted its 600,000 tonne/year purified terephthalic acid (PTA) plant in China in the middle of this week after a shutdown lasting about 10 days, a company source said on Thursday.

“We restarted either Wednesday or Tuesday, I cannot be very sure, but as of now, operations are near full 100%,” said the source.

The source did not say whether the plant, located in the eastern Chinese port city of Ningbo, was down due to a mechanical fault, or whether the outage was a routine maintenance shutdown.

But a shutdown about six months after start-up is normal among PTA plants, in order for final optimisation work to be carried out, said an official from a PTA licensing company who declined to be named.

NMC’s plant started up in February this year, with on-spec production a few months after.

The shutdown did not affect supplies to contract customers, said the source and NMC’s agents. One agent said that there was enough inventory to satisfy customers’ needs until August.

PTA spot prices in China were also hardly affected by the outage, hovering at yuan (CNY) 8,450-8,490/tonne ($1,117-1,122) ex-warehouse, unchanged from last Friday’s closing levels.

NMC is a 90:10 joint venture of Ningbo PTA Investment – which was established by Mitsubishi Chemical (61%), Itochu Corp (35%) and Mitsubishi Corp (4%) – and the Citic group. 

ICIS Copyright © Reed Business Information 2009

Author: Salmon Aidan Lee
+65 6780 4359

For the latest chemical news, data and analysis that directly impacts your business sign up for a free trial to ICIS news - the breaking online news service for the global chemical industry.

Get the facts and analysis behind the headlines from our market leading weekly magazine: sign up to a free trial to ICIS Chemical Business.