MOSCOW (MRC) -- Czech refiner Unipetrol reported a first-quarter net loss hurt by an outage at its Litvinov complex where it said the restart of a damaged steam cracker would have to be postponed by a month until August, said Reuters.
The 25-million-crown (USD1.05 million) loss followed a 1.995 billion crown profit a year earlier as revenue fell 26 percent. Unipetrol said it expected to restart the steam cracker at Litvinov in August at 80 percent capacity and have it at full capacity in October. It was taken off line last August after a fire.
The company reported a 57 percent fall in petrochemical product sales while refinery product sales were up 46 percent, buoyed by steady production at its other refinery, Kralupy.
Unipetrol's earnings were rebounding prior to the fire, and despite the accident it reported a net profit of 7 billion crowns in 2015, its best performance since Poland's PKN Orlen took over the company a decade earlier.
Unipetrol said it expected to recover lost business profits estimated at 2.9 billion crowns in the first quarter through its insurance policies. It also aims to recover repair costs of 4 billion crowns and lost business profit in 2015 estimated at 2.4 billion crowns.
Unipetrol reported an operating cashflow of 4.8 billion crowns at the end of the first quarter, including 1.9 billion related to advance payments from its insurer.
Unipetrol started regular maintenance at Litvinov in mid-March, the company said, and is partly re-starting some operations. However, it said a fire occurred in a vacuum distillation unit, delaying a full restart.
As MRC informed earlier, the Litvinov operations in the Czech Republic were hit by a blast at the steam cracker unit last August, and the plant's refinery has been running at reduced capacity. Petrochemical group Unipetrol started planned maintenance outage at its Litvinov refinery and connected operations on Tuesday, expected to last until April 30.
Unipetrol is 63%-owned by Poland’s state-controlled PKN Orlen petrochemicals and oil group.
MRC