MOSCOW (MRC) -- Formosa Plastics USA is planning to shut its 798,000 mt/year polyvinyl chloride plant and an upstream 753,000 mt/year vinyl chloride monomer unit at its Point Comfort, Texas complex for turnarounds in February, reported S&P Global with reference to a source familiar with the company operations.
A company spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The company originally planned to conduct those turnarounds in the fourth quarter of this year, but pushed the work to early 2020.
Market participants said the company was boosting its PVC stocks ahead of the work to ensure contract customers remain supplied as usual, as is typical in the lead-up to a turnaround. However, market sources expect export volume availability to be limited in January and February.
In addition, Westlake Chemical was slated to bring a PVC capacity expansion online by the end of 2019 at its 272,155 mt/year plant in Geismar, Louisiana. The company has not specified how much of a 340,195 mt/year expansion of output at both Geismar and Burghausen, Germany, will be at Geismar, but sources expect the bulk of that new output to be added to the Louisiana plant.
Market sources expect that work to limit Westlake's export volume availability next month as well.
A company spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
As MRC informed before, Formosa Plastics' new 1.5 million mt/year cracker in Point Comfort, Texas, has come online and was seen ramping up through January. The company's new 400,000 low density polyethylene (LDPE) plant at Point Comfort "should be ready in February for now," said the source familiar with the company operations.
According to MRC's DataScope report, exports of suspension polyvinyl chloride (SPVC) from Russia totalled 193,700 tonnes in 2019, up by 11% year on year. Imports increased more significantly - by 217% year on year - to 50,900 tonnes
Formosa Petrochemical is involved primarily in the business of refining crude oil, selling refined petroleum products and producing and selling olefins (including ethylene, propylene, butadiene and BTX) from its naphtha cracking operations. Formosa Petrochemical is also the largest olefins producer in Taiwan and its olefins products are mostly sold to companies within the Formosa Group. Among the company's chemical products are paraxylene (PX), phenyl ethylene, acetone and pure terephthalic acid (PTA). The company's plastic products include acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS) resins, polystyrene (PS), polypropylene (PP) and panlite (PC).
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