(PlastEurope) -- An explosion and fire at the Nanyo complex (Shunan City, Yamaguchi prefecture) of Japanese chemicals and plastics producer Tosoh killed a 52-year-old worker and shut two of its three vinyl chloride monomer (VCM) plants on 13 November. Down after the blast were the no. 2 VCM line with reported capacity of 550,000 t/y and the no. 3 VCM line with capacity of 400,000 t/y. The no.1 plant with capacity of 250,000 t/y is believed to have been off stream since October for maintenance.
Following the incident, Tosoh's feedstock supplier, Idemitsu, closed the ethylene pipeline to the site and also halted its 623,000 t/y cracker naphtha temporarily. Latest reports indicate that the cracker is back up but operating only at 80% of capacity. The plant shutdowns at Tosoh have taken out about 1.2m t of VCM out of the Japanese market, according to news agencies. This is about a third of the nation's overall capacity of 3.5m t/y.
Perspectives of development of polymer markets, pricing issues and other important aspects will be discussed at The Polymers Summit-2011, which will be held in Moscow on November 30, 2011 at the Ritz Carlton Hotel. The Summit will be organized by MRC with the support of ICIS. The main idea of the Summit is to find a "the golden mean" between producers and converters. When producers receive exactly such margin of production, which helps them to invest in production expansion in order to substitute polymers imports, and the converters receive such price of feedstock that helps them to compete imported finished products. The Summit site gives an access to the live video of the Summit, speakers" presentations, as well as opportunities to ask questions or make appointments to any Summit partcipant.