Versalis Brindisi cracker to return to full capacity by end of week

LONDON (ICIS)–ENI subsidiary Versalis’ Brindisi cracker in Italy is expected to return to full capacity during this weekend, said a company source on Wednesday.

This follows a recent electrical interruption which had resulted in an unplanned outage on 10 April. The outage at cracker, which has the capacity to produce 440,000 tonnes/ year of ethylene, was originally expected to last 24-48 hours.

The company source said that “our system is coming back to normality with little impact on our olefins’ balance”, adding that its other crackers in Priolo, Italy, and Dunkirk, France, were running at full capacity.

In related news, Versalis idled its Porto Marghera cracker in February for six months as part of a €200m overhaul at the site in a bid to regain competitiveness.