MRC -- Grupa Azoty Polyolefins, the special-purpose vehicle overseeing Poland’s delayed $1.8bn world-scale propane dehydrogenation (PDH) and polypropylene (PP) plant, has so far requested support loan tranches amounting to €55m, parent company Grupa Azoty Police said.
Azoty Police made the announcement after it and the group parent company, state-controlled Grupa Azoty, received the latest request for a tranche, of €10m.
Grupa Azoty Polyolefins, said Azoty Police, was faced by insufficient funding to complete the PDH/PP project because general contractor Hyundai Engineering has been delayed in finishing the production complex.
Grupa Azoty announced in late November that commercial operation of the installation that it started up in June had been delayed until the first half of 2024.
In a note to the market on the installation, billed as Europe’s first new PP plant to open in 15 years, Azoty said: “The updated investment schedule provides for an installation integrity test to be carried out in the first quarter of 2024 and the commencement of commercial operation of the plant in the first half of 2024.”
After the delay was announced, one PP buyer told ICIS: “Yes, we have been informed by Azoty [representative], some months ago, about their delay and the new start up scheduling. We do not expect any impact, because the situation was well known. Maybe such delay will [postpone] the pressure on other EU PP suppliers, especially in a moment when the PP demand in EU is quite low.”
Another buyer said: “My feeling is that it’s better [to] not produce than produce and lose money. I don’t expect issues for this delay.”
The plant, in Police, in the far northwest of Poland by the sea-linked river Oder, has capacity to producer 429,000 tonnes/year of polymer-grade propylene (PGP) and 437,000 tonnes/year of PP.
mrchub.com