MOSCOW (MRC) -- South Korean chemical manufacturer Lotte Chemical Titan, a subsidiary of the South Korean Lotte Group, has clarified that the new investment of a petrochemical plant worth USD4 billion in Cilegon, Banten, would be carried out by its sister company Lotte Chemical Indonesia, as per Plastemart.
Lotte Chemical Titan president director Yoon Sungku made the clarification, following media reports that wrongly said that the new project would be run by his company.
"Lotte Chemical Titan engages in the business of trading polyethylene and polypropylene, while our subsidiary Lotte Chemical Titan Nusantara engages in the business of producing and selling polyethylene," Yoon said.
He stressed that Lotte Chemical Titan and Lotte Chemical Titan Nusantara had nothing to do with activities of the new plant in Cilegon. However, he added that the new plant would produce ethylene which might fulfill the feedstock requirement of Lotte Chemical Nusantara in producing polyethylene, he said.
"The plant which is being built on 45 hectares of land can produce 1 million tons of ethylene per year," Yoon said. He later explained that Lotte Chemical Indonesia was not listed on the Indonesia Stock Exchange (IDX) as the firm’s stocks were mostly owned by its parent company, Malaysia’s Lotte Chemical Titan Group.
According to a statement, Lotte Chemical Indonesia is 99.998% owned by Malaysia’s Lotte Chemical Titan and the remaining percentage by Lotte Chemical Singapore, another subsidiary of Malaysia’s Lotte Chemical Titan.
As MRC reported earlier, in mid-April, Lotte Chemical Titan unexpectedly shut its No. 1 and 2 naphtha-fed steam crackers at Pasir Gudang (Malaysia) on Tuesday due to an interruption of water supplies. The No. 1 cracker can produce 260,000 m tpa of ethylene and 160,000 m tpa of propylene while the No. 2 cracker can make 407,000 m tpa of ethylene and 260,000 m tpa of propylene. The No. 2 cracker had just completed a planned turnaround from February 6 to March 29.
Lotte Chemical Titan produces Malaysia's most comprehensive portfolio of olefins and polyolefins which contribute to the enhancement of everyday life. Lotte Chemical Titan's production site in Malaysia consists of eleven process facilities, two co-generation plants and three tank farms. They are located on 2 sites in Pasir Gudang and Tanjung Langsat in the state of Johor. In 2006, Lotte Chemical Titan acquired PT Lotte Chemical Titan Nusantara, Indonesia’s first and largest polyethylene plant in the country. This acquisition boosted the polyolefins capacity by approximately 50%, thus making the company one of the largest producers in South East Asia. Lotte Chemical Titan was acquired by Lotte Chemical Corp., forming part of the Lotte conglomerate of Korea, in 2010. The company thus became one of Lotte Chemical Corp.’s largest overseas subsidiaries.
MRC