MOSCOW (MRC) -- LyondellBasell (LBI) has announced that Ulsan PP Co., Ltd., a joint venture between PolyMirae Company Ltd, a 50-50 partnership of LyondellBasell and Daelim, and SK Advanced broke ground in the southeastern port city of Ulsan, South Korea, as per LBI's press release.
This new plant will utilize LyondellBasell’s world leading fifth generation Spheripol technology and is expected to begin production in May 2021. With its 400 kiloton annual capacity, the facility will be one of the largest polypropylene plants of its kind in Asia.
"Joint ventures are an important part of our growth strategy to reach the global market," said Ken Lane, executive vice president of Global Olefins & Polyolefins (O&P) at LyondellBasell. "With the combined advantages of LyondellBasell, Daelim and SK Advanced, this new joint venture will be able to provide competitive and differentiated polypropylene products that help advance fuel efficient vehicles, flexible packaging solutions, clean water and high-quality hygiene to serve the rapidly growing markets in Asia."
The Ulsan PP plant will leverage a vertically integrated value chain of SK, converting propane supplied by SK Gas to propylene by SK Advanced and finally to polypropylene with LyondellBasell’s leading Spheripol PP process technology. Through this integrated value chain approach, the companies will enhance the stable supply of raw materials, operational efficiency and responsiveness to market changes.
PolyMirae will offtake all polypropylene produced by Ulsan PP which will be sold to customers in South Korea through PolyMirae and exported throughout Asia through LyondellBasell and Daelim, utilizing their superior market knowledge and expertise.
As MRC informed before, in September 2019, LyondellBasell sarted up a new, fifth production line at its polypropylene compounding plant in Knapsack, Germany capable of producing 25 kt/yr. With this, capacity of the Knapsack facility is over 200 kt/yr, making the site "the world’s largest polypropylene compounding facility".
According to MRC's ScanPlast report, the PP consumption in the Russian market was 909,260 tonnes in January-August 2019, up by 10% year on year. Shipments of PP block copolymer and homopolymer PP increased.
Ulsan PP Co., Ltd. is a joint venture between PolyMirae and SK Advanced. Established in November 2018, the company is headquartered in the new port of Hwangseong-dong, Namsan-gu, Ulsan, South Korea.
PolyMirae is a 50-50 joint venture between Daelim and LyondellBasell, both of which are well respected companies worldwide, and is a leading polypropylene production company in Korea. With Daelim's outstanding accumulated on-site operational experience and LyondellBasell's core technologies and worldwide sales network, PolyMirae was founded on September 1st 2000 in order to produce and supply the best polypropylene in Asia.
Daelim Industrial is a construction and petrochemical company that is a part of the Daelim Group hailing from South Korea. Daelim builds petrochemical, refinery and power plants in more than 36 countries. With headquarters in Seoul, South Korea, Daelim completed more than 600 engineering and construction projects around the world, as well as operates manufacturing facilities in South Korea. Founded in 1939, Daelim has approximately 7,000 employees worldwide. Revenues for 2018 is USD10 billion.
SK Advanced is a joint venture between Korea’s SK Gas, Saudi Arabia’s APC and Kuwait’s PIC, a subsidiary of Kuwait’s state-run oil company, Kuwait Petroleum Company (KPC). SK Advanced won the Industrial Peace Prize of Ulsan city for its efforts to maintain an accident-free workplace and build excellent labor-management relations since 2016.
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LyondellBasell is one of the largest plastics, chemicals and refining companies in the world. Driven by its 13,000 employees around the globe, LyondellBasell produces materials and products that are key to advancing solutions to modern challenges like enhancing food safety through lightweight and flexible packaging, protecting the purity of water supplies through stronger and more versatile pipes, and improving the safety, comfort and fuel efficiency of many of the cars and trucks on the road. LyondellBasell sells products into approximately 100 countries and is the world's largest licensor of polyolefin technologies.
MRC