MOSCOW (MRC) -- South Korea's Hanwha Total Petrochemical on Thursday declared force majeure on styrene monomer supply from its 650,000 mt/year No. 2 unit in Daesan, due to an ongoing labour strike, reported Apic-online with reference to sources with knowledge of the matter.
The Daesan plant operates two SM units with a nameplate capacity of 400,000 mt/year and 650,000 mt/year, respectively.
The units were shut for scheduled maintenance on March 22, S&P Global Platts reported previously.
The original start-up date for the smaller No. 1 unit had been April 25, but was delayed to May 6, and is currently running at a low operating rate, sources said.
The No. 2 unit was scheduled to resume operations on May 8, but sources said the restart date is unclear amid the strike.
As MRC informed before, Hanwha Total Petrochemical Co Ltd said in December 2017 that it planned to spend USD331.29 MM on a new factory in South Korea to increase polyethylene (PE) output by 400 Mtpy by 2019. The joint venture of South Korean conglomerate Hanwha Group and French oil and gas company Total SA in a statement said the factory will raise its polyethylene capacity to 1.12 MMtpy when completed by the end of 2019.
Hanwha Group is one of the largest business conglomerate in South Korea. Founded in 1952 as Korea Explosives Inc., the group has grown into a large multi-profile business conglomerate, with diversified holdings stretching from explosives, their original business, to retail to financial services.
MRC