MOSCOW (MRC) -- Latin America’s largest petrochemical complex - a joint venture of Brazil’s Braskem and Mexico’s Grupo Idesa - is operating at 50% capacity, 45 days since the start of operations at the facility, as per Plastemart.
The complex, built at a total investment cost of USD5.2 bln, was inaugurated Thursday afternoon, 23 June 2016, by Mexican Energy Secretary Pedro Joaquin Coldwell and the CEO of Mexican state-owned oil giant Petroleos Mexicanos, Jose Antonio Gonzalez Anaya.
Pemex-Gas has a contract with the Ethylene XXI complex for the delivery of 66,000 bpd of ethane for 20 years. Located in the Gulf coast municipality of Nanchital, Veracruz state, the 200-hectare (490-acre) complex will produce roughly 750,000 tons of high density polyethylene (HDPE) and 300,000 tons of low density polyethylene (LDPE) per year, using ethane as feedstock, once at full capacity.
As MRC wrote before, the 1.05-million m.t./year cracker is already feeding the complex’s two high-density polyethylene (HDPE) plants, which have capacities of 400,000 m.t./year and 350,000 m.t./year, each unit based on Ineos technology. The third PE unit has capacity for 300,000 m.t./year of low-density polyethylene (LDPE), using LyondellBasell technology, and is in the process of ramping up.
"The HDPE plants were started up in April, with the LDPE started up in June, and while they are not currently running at 100% they have been tested and they can run at 100% and over," Grupo Idesa CEO Jose Luis Uriegas.
The jv expects its 2016 PE production to be about 50-60% of the the total capacity.
Braskem S.A. produces petrochemicals and generates electricity. The Company produces ethylene, propylene, benzene, toluene, xylenes, butadiene, butene, isoprene, dicyclopentediene, MTBE, caprolactam, ammonium sulfate, cyclohexene, polyethylene theraphtalat, polyethylene, and polyvinyl chloride (PVC).
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