MOSCOW (MRC) -- South Korea's GS Caltex restarted its new mixed-feed cracker at Yeosu on July 5, 2021, and resumed trial operations at the plant, reported S&P Global.
The company shut this cracker on June 27, 2021, owing to a technical issue. The company source said it will take some time for GS Caltex to produce on-spec ethylene and propylene.
The new steam cracker, which came online around June 18, has the capacity to produce 750,000 mt/year of ethylene and 430,000 mt of propylene. This schedule is earlier than the initial plan of 2022.
As MRC informed before, this June, the company also started up its new high density polyethylene (HDPE) in Yeosu with an annual capacity of 500,000 tons/year that would concentrate on producing the film (TR-144, TRB-115), blow molding (5520BN or BM593), and injection (6060 or 6060UV) grades.
The company also operates 180,000 tons/year polypropylene (PP) plant at the same complex.
The project is a 50-50 joint venture between GS Energy Corp. and Chevron Corp., costing 2 trillion won (USD1.84 billion) that started construction work in 2019.
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 744,130 tonnes in the first four month of 2021, up by 4% year on year. Shipments of all PE grades increased. At the same time, PP deliveries to the Russian market were 523,900 tonnes in January-April 2021, up by 55% year on year. Supply of homopolymer PP and PP block copolymers increased, whereas shipments of PP random copolymers decreased.
MRC