Kuwait’s EQUATE Petrochemical completes month-long turnaround

SINGAPORE (ICIS)–EQUATE Petrochemical Co has completed a turnaround at its plants, and the first phase of debottlenecking its polyethylene (PE) plant, the Kuwait producer said over the weekend.

All its plants were taken off line on 20 November to 20 December 2014 and resumed their normal operations on 23 December, the company said in a statement.

The month-long turnaround is done once every eight years, it said.

EQUATE’s current PE capacity stands at 825,000 tonnes/year, which is expected to increase to nearly 1m tonnes/year once the debottlenecking project is completed during 2016, the company said.

EQUATE, which started operations in 1997, has a fully integrated world-scale manufacturing facility that produces more than 5m tonnes/year  petrochemical products, which are marketed throughout the Middle East, Asia, Africa and Europe.

The company is a joint venture between US firm Dow Chemical and Kuwait’s Petrochemical Industries Co (PIC).