MOSCOW (MRC) -- Sinopec Zhongke Refinery and Petrochemical has successfully completed the trial run at its newly constructed polypropylene (PP) plants and would proceed to commercial production within the month of August, reported CommoPlast.
Thus, No. 1 PP unit with an annual capacity of 350,000 tons/year would start producing commercial cargoes on 18 August 2020. The initial output might be homo-PP yarn before the company switches to PP fiber grades.
No. 2 PP line with nameplate capacity of 200,000 tons/year is scheduled to produce commercial cargoes on 24 August 2020, making homo-PP injection and high MI PP copolymer.
Meanwhile, a source close to the producer informed that the company is also planning to perform trial production at the polyethylene (PE) plants by the end of August, however, there are no exact dates set at the time of this report.
The PE plants consist of a 100,000 tons/year low density polyethylene (LDPE) line and a 350,000 tons/year high density polyethylene (HDPE)/linear low density polyethylene (LLDPE) swing unit.
As MRC wrote previously, Sinopec Zhongke successfully conducted trial runs at its new 350,000 tons/year No. 1 PP unit on 9 June, 2020.
We remind that top Chinese state refiner Sinopec Corp started up a USD6 billion new refinery and petrochemical plant in south China, making it the country’s third integrated complex to start operations in the past 18 months or so. The Sinopec venture, situated in coastal city of Zhanjiang, comprises a 200,000 barrel per day (bpd) crude oil refinery and an 800,000 tonne-per-year ethylene facility, built at a cost of 44 billion yuan (USD6.2 billion), Sinopec said in a statement. Two other complexes with combined refining capacity of 800,000 bpd have started up since early 2019, one built by privately-controlled Hengli Petrochemical Corp and the other by Zhejiang Petrochemical Corp.
According to MRC's DataScope report, PP imports into Russia rose in the first six months of 2020 by 21% year on year to 105,300 tonnes. Propylene homopolymer (homopolymer PP) accounted for the main increase in imports.
China Petrochemical Corporation (Sinopec Group) is a super-large petroleum and petrochemical enterprise group established in July 1998 on the basis of the former China Petrochemical Corporation. Sinopec Group"s key business activities include the exploration and production of oil and natural gas, petrochemicals and other chemical products, oil refining.
MRC