Another new plant in Saudi Arabia was restarted in mid-October. Although the plant was originally started up in mid-July, sources report the plant had to shut in early August and has been shut since then. The plant belongs to Yanbu National Petrochemical (YANSAB) and has a capacity of 400,000 tons/year.
Inside China, three new plants are scheduled for start up in the second half of October. Panjin Petrochemical had said it expected to start up its new plant on October 25. The plant has a capacity of 250,000 tons/year. Jinxi Petrochemical, part of CNPC, was also expecting to start up their expanded
PP capacity between October 19-23rd. The
PP capacity is at 150,000 tons/year. Finally, Da Tang Inner Mongolia will be starting up a new 460,000 tons/year
PP plant at the end of this month, according to the company.
The
PP market in China is in the midst of a price rally which began after the National Day holidays ended in that country on October 8th. Buyers had purchased little ahead of the holiday amidst a bearish atmosphere and needed to restock some materials afterwards. This helped push up domestic prices significantly right after the holiday. The rally then found further support from surging crude oil and naphtha prices which has led to higher price announcements for the month of November from regular suppliers to the country. However, the consensus view in the country is that the rally will end in the medium term because of the new capacities which have been brought onstream this year for
PP.
mrcplast.com
