MOSCOW (MRC) -- SayanskKhimplast, Russia's second largest polyvinyl chloride (PVC) producer, has declared force majeure on deliveries of polymer in March - April, said the company's customers.
SayanskKhimplast was forced to shut down its PVC production last week. The company's customers said this week, the plant declared force majeure on the resin delivery during two spring months because of the forced outage of its production.
The shutdown at the Sayansk plant's PVC production was caused by technical problems at Angarsk Polymer Plant (Rosneft) and, as a result, by the termination of ethylene shipments. Angarsk Polymer Plant took off-steam operations of almost the entire complex, including the ethylene unit, on 11 February due to technical problems. According to unofficial information, the outage at Angarsk Polymer Plant's ethylene unit will last until mid-April.
Given the duration of the ethylene unit's outage at Angarsk Polymer Plant, SayanskKhimplast's PVC production is not expected to be resumed until the second half of April. At the same time, the plant will not shut down its production for maintenance in August.
As per ICIS-MRC Price report, SayanskKhimplast quite significantly increased its capacity utilisation in January, the plant's production reached 21,700 tonnes versus 15,300 tonnes in December 2015. SayanskKhimplast's overall PVC output fell to 208,500 tonnes last year because of tight supply of ethylene, down by 26% year on year.
JSC "Sayanskkhimplast" (Irkutsk region), formed in 1998, is a large-scale production complex of organochloride products, integrated into a single production cycle. SayanskKhimplast produces polyvinyl chloride (PVC), caustic soda and bleaching agent Belizna. After commissioning of RusVinyl's (Nizhny Novgorod region) PVC production, Sayanskkhimplast became the second largest PVC producer in Russia. At present, the plant's annual production capacity is 300,000 tonnes of PVC. The company plans to increase its PVC production to 700,000 tonnes per year.
MRC