Formosa plans to build MEG plant, another PE unit in Texas

HOUSTON (ICIS)–Formosa Plastics plans to build a monoethylene glycol (MEG) plant as well as another polyethylene (PE) unit at its Point Comfort complex in Texas, according to air-permit applications obtained on Thursday.

The initial pages of the applications do not list the capacity of the plants or the grade of the PE.

The PE plant would be the second new one that Formosa plans to build at Point Comfort.

The company has already started construction on a low-density polyethylene (LDPE) plant at Point Comfort as well as an ethane cracker and a propane dehydrogenation (PDH) unit.

Construction on the second PE plant should start in the fourth quarter of 2015, and it should start operations in December 2017, the permit application said.

Construction on the MEG plant should start in November 2015, and operations should start in September 2017, the permit said.

While Formosa will build and operate the MEG plant, it will be owned by Nan Ya, a polyethylene terephthalate (PET) producer that is part of Formosa Plastics Group (Taiwan).

Nan Ya also owns the other MEG plant at Point Comfort. That plant has a capacity of 300,000 tonnes/year, according to ICIS plants and projects.

Of the projects under construction, the ethane cracker will have an ethylene capacity of 1.75m tons/year (1.59m tonnes/year), and the PDH plant will have a propylene capacity of 725,000 tons/year, according to a permit from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

According to the EPA permit, the LDPE unit will have a capacity of 625,500 tons/year and be able to produce resin at different grades, including products that use vinyl acetate as a co-monomer.

Currently, the ethylene capacity at Point Comfort is 1.50m tonnes/year, and MEG capacity is 300,000 tonnes/year, according to ICIS.

The plant can produce 650,000 tonnes/year of high density polyethylene (HDPE) and 365,000 tonnes/year of linear low density polyethylene (LLDPE).