MOSCOW (MRC) -- Formosa Plastics USA, part of Formosa Petrochemical, has restarted its polyvinyl chloride (PVC) plant in Point Comfort, Texas, after planned maintenance works, reported S&P Global.
Formosa's Point Comfort plant with the capacit of 798,000 mt/year was expected to reach normal rates by early April, a source close to the company said.
The company did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
As MRC wrote before, the PVC work at Point Comfort had been slated to wrap up by the end of February, but was still ongoing in early March 2020.
According to MRC's ScanPlast report, contrary to seasonal factors, Russian producers of unmixed PVC have maintained a high level of capacity utilisation. Russia's overal PVC output totalled 91,700 tonnes in January 2020, up by 4% year on year. January production of unmixed PVC was 91,700 tonnes versus 87,760 tonnes in January 2019 and 81,400 tonnes in December 2019. Thus, despite relatively weak demand for resin from the domestic market, the average capacity utilisation exceeded 95% last month. Russia's overall PVC production reached 975,000 tonnes in 2019, compared to 958,600 tonnes a year earlier.
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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