MOSCOW (MRC) -- Lotte Chemical, South Korean petrochemical major, plans to take off-stream its naphtha cracker in Yeosu for a scheduled maintenance this year, reported Reuters with reference to industry sources.
The company is expected to put its Yeosu naphtha cracker under scheduled maintenance around May or June, 2022.
Lotte's Yeosu naphtha cracker can produce 1.2 million tonnes per year (tpy) of ethylene.
The sources said the timings have not been finalised as yet.
As MRC informed before, Lotte Chemical shut its naphtha-fed steam cracker in Daesan for an annual maintenance on 15 May, 2021. This cracker with the capacity of 1.1 million mt/year of ethylene and 550,000 mt/year of propylene resumed production on 23 June, 2021.
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 2,265,290 tonnes in the first eleven months of 2021, up by 14% year on year. Shipments of all grades of ethylene polymers increased. At the same time, PP shipments to the Russian market were 1,363,850 tonnes in January-November, 2021, up by 25% year on year. Supply of homopolymer PP and block-copolymers of propylene (PP block copolymers) increased, whereas supply of injection moulding PP random copolymers decreased significantly.
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