MOSCOW (MRC) -- South Korea's Lotte Chemical has shut its naphtha-fed steam cracker in Daesan for an annual maintenance, reported S&P Global.
Thus, the company began the turnaround at this cracker with the capacity of 1.1 million mt/year of ethylene and 550,000 mt/year of propylene on 15 May, 2021. Lotte expects to resume production at this facility on 23 June.
The maintenance at Lotte's Daesan cracker is likely to limit cargoes to China -- the biggest propylene buyer.
As MRC informed earlier, Lotte Chemical restarted its fire-hit naphtha-fed steam cracker in Daesan in early December, 2020. Thus, the facility began trial runs of naphtha on 7 December, 2020, and the company achieved commercial production on 8 December. The cracker was shut on March 4, 2020, following an explosion, which injured more than 30 people.
Ethylene and propylene are the main feedstocks for the production of polyethylene (PE) and polypropylene (PP), respectively.
According to MRC's ScanPlast report, Russia's estimated PE consumption totalled 576,270 tonnes in the first three month of 2021, up by 4% year on year. Low density polyethylene (LDPE) and high density polyethylene (HDPE) shipments increased. At the same time, PP shipments to the Russian market totalled 410,890 tonnes in January-March 2021, up by 56% year on year. Supply of homopolymer PP and PP block copolymers increased.
Lotte Chemical runs two naphtha crackers in South Korea. One cracker is located in Daesan county in Seosan which can produce 1.1 million tonnes per year of ethylene with the other 1.2 million tonnes per year cracker in the southwestern city of Yeosu.
MRC