Taiwan’s Tuntex to idle PTA unit two weeks in Oct

19 September 2007 10:01  [Source: ICIS news]

SINGAPORE (ICIS news)--Taiwan’s Tuntex Petrochemical plans to shut its 440,000 tonne/year purified terephthalic acid (PTA) plant at Tainan in late October for a two-week turnaround, a company said Wednesday.

"The shutdown is for routine maintenance," said the source, adding that contract volumes to customers would not be disrupted during the shutdown. He declined to say if the shutdown was also due to poor economics for PTA producers.

PTA makers had been seeing their margins increasingly squeezed since last year, after feedstock costs shoot up and PTA prices languished amid overcapacity.

In August, most PTA sellers made losses based on a paraxylene (PX) contract price at $1,145/tonne CFR (cost and freight) Asia, as PTA prices were generally no more than $900/tonne CFR China. September could also become a loss-making month for PTA producers given the lukewarm customers’ demand for their products.

Besides Tuntex, several Asian PTA producers such as Samsung Petrochemical, Samnam Petrochemical and Mitsui Chemicals have shut or are going to idle PTA units between now until the end of the year.

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Author: Salmon Aidan Lee
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