Canada chemical plant utilisation rose to 78.8% in ’11 Q4

TORONTO (ICIS)–Canada-based chemical producers operated their plants at 78.8% of capacity in the 2011 fourth-quarter, up by 1.6 percentage points from 77.2% in the third quarter, a government statistics agency said on Wednesday.

Ottawa-based Statistics Canada attributed the sequential quarter-to-quarter increase mainly to higher production of pharmaceuticals.

Compared with the 2010 fourth quarter, Canada’s chemical plant utilisation was up by 3.8 percentage points from 75.0%.

Meanwhile, Canada’s plastics producers ran their plants at an average utilisation rate of 74.9% in the 2011 fourth quarter, up by 3.2 percentage points from 71.7% in the third quarter, with the increase primarily due to increased production for plastics in the motor vehicles sector.

Year on year, capacity utilisation at plastics plants was up by 6.3 percentage points from 68.6% in the 2010 fourth quarter.

Canada’s overall industrial plant capacity utilisation was 80.5% in the 2011 fourth quarter, compared with 80.0% in the third quarter and 78.0% in the 2010 fourth quarter.