Asian ethylene makers amend plant shutdown schedules

(plastemart) -- Ethylene producers in Taiwan and Japan have made changes in their schedules for plant shutdowns.

CPC Corp. (CPC) will permanently shut its No. 3 permanently shut its No. 3 naphtha cracker at Kaohsiung, with capacity to produce 230,000 tpa of ethylene, at the end of May.

This is a delay of atleast two months from the originally planned schedule, to ensure steady supplies while it completes work on a new plant. Show Denko has delayed the restart of its ethylene plant in Oita, Japan, to the end of May from March 30. Production lines at the plant were shut for maintenance last month, and the company has extended the shutdown after it discovered a fault in cooling equipment on March 18.

MRC

(plastemart) -- The Russian government has no plans to change the export duty on crude oil and products, including high export duties for gasoline and naphtha.


In May 2011, the government introduced export duties for gasoline and naphtha at 90% of that for Urals to limit export of the products and resolve fuel shortages on the domestic market.

MRC

(plastemart) -- The arbitrage opportunity to move polyethylene cargoes from China to Southeast Asia is open, but cargo flow is still limited.

Traders are mainly moving linear low density polyethylene (LLDPE) from Chinese bonded warehouses to Southeast Asia, in a practice called "re-exporting." The main factor behind this has largely been slow PE demand in China due to lower-than-usual orders for finished products. Concurrently, this is the conventionally low demand season between April and May for the PE market.

This has caused a big gap between prices of ex-warehouse cargoes and shipment cargoes. China has been closed for a public holiday Monday to Wednesday, preventing any price movements.

PE in Southeast Asia has been on an uptrend due to tight local supply, particularly in Indonesia where domestic production has been low, especially of LLDPE, due to poor margins. Market sources were unable to pinpoint exactly when the arbitrage window opened, but have seen movements over the last two weeks. Traders in China prefer to hold on to their lower cost cargo.
MRC

(polyestertime) -- Octal Petrochemicals has installed the world's largest reactors of melt-to resin technology (MTR) for the production of highperformance PET as the fourth and fifth manufacturing facilities remain firmly on track for completion in May 2012. To date, one million manhours have been completed without a single lost-time-injury (LTI) that reflects Octal's strong commitment to safety standards.

The expansion will add an additional 527,000 tonne a year of PET bottle grade resin to Octal's current production capacity of 400,000 tonne per annum, making it the largest producer in the world on one site. The highly energy-efficient reactors have proven successful for the production of high viscous melts, enabling Octal to set the global benchmark for superior product quality and sustainability through the application of the most advanced technology available.

The PET resin and sheets produced are acclaimed by international experts to have the lowest carbon footprint, paving the way for others in the industry to follow the company's pioneering footsteps.

MRC

(chinadaily) -- The Chinese textile industry is facing crisis as current typical profit margin in the sector is lower than the cost of finance. During 2011, more than 30 percent of textile and clothing firms in Jiangsu and Zhejiang are reported to have gone out of business.

Rising labour costs are cited most frequently as a cause of the industry's difficulties. Low technology, labour-intensive processes have increasingly been transferred to cheaper production sources in South East Asia, such as Cambodia and Vietnam, or to eastern European countries, such as Bulgaria and Poland.

Industry sources also comment that the corporate tax burden is excessive. The difference between sales tax on processed goods (17 percent) and the purchase tax payable on cotton (13 percent) cannot be recouped, for instance.

However, industry participants appear rather gloomy about prospects for the next several months, owing,
in particular, to a poor outlook for demand from the euro-zone countries. The call for tax concessions
appears thus to be increasing.
MRC