MOSCOW (MRC) -- Braskem Idesa, the 75-25 joint venture between Braskem and Grupo Idesa, started injecting ethane today at their Etileno XXI cracker project at Coatzacoalcos, Mexico, said Vidalatinasd.
The jv expects to have ethylene production by next week. By the end of March, the company aims to have the cracker running at 60% capacity with the first polyethylene (PE) line up and running, according to Cleantho de Paiva Leite Filho, commercial director, Braskem, speaking at the IHS Chemical Latin American Petrochemical Summit, part of the World Petrochemical Conference in Houston, TX.
The Etileno XXI complex, to which EFE was granted exclusive access, looks from a distance like a city skyline and features two towers measuring 120 meters (393 feet) and 102 meters (334 feet) in height that dominate this municipality's jungle landscape.
Occupying a 200hectare (493acre) parcel of land along one of the banks of the Coatzacoalcos River, the complex has already begun producing ethylene, a raw material that is transformed through a lengthy process into plastic pellets, whitish plastic balls measuring around three centimeters (1.2 inches) in diameter.
Once the complex is fully operational, high and lowdensity polyethylene (plastic) production will amount to more than 1 million metric tons annually and allow Mexico to substitute 70 percent of its imports of those materials.
The complex will have the capacity to process 66,000 barrels per day of ethane, a feedstock for ethylene production that the complex will purchase from Mexican stateowned oil company Petroleos Mexicanos, or Pemex, and which previously had gone to waste.
The ethane brought from Villahermosa, in the neighboring state of Tabasco, via a 200kilometer (125mile) pipeline will be used to produce 750,000 metric tons a year of highdensity polyethylene for production of objects such as cellphone or tablet cases and medical prostheses and 300,000 metric tons of lowdensity polyethylene used to make plastic bags.
The engineering, procurement and construction contractor for the Etileno XXI project was a consortium led by Odebrecht and also including Technip and ICA Fluor.
The complex now is being operated by Braskem Idesa, a Mexican company made up of Brazil's Braskem (the petrochemical arm of Odebrecht and the largest producer of thermoplastic resins in the Americas) and Grupo Idesa, a leading group in Mexico's petrochemical sector.
As MRC wrote before, in 2012, Braskem Idesa announced the approval of a line of credit in the amount of USD700 million by the Brazlian National Economic and Social Development Bank - BNDES to finance the construction of the largest petrochemical complex being developed in the Americas: Braskem Idesa- Etileno XXI Project. The group of financial institutions also included Mexico's development banks, Bancomext and Nafinsa- Nacional Financiera.
Braskem is Brazilian main producer of polyethylene and polypropylene. In addition with ongoing plants located in both petrochemical complexes, in April 2008 Braskem opened a 300,000 metric ton polypropylene plant in the city of Paulinia (Sao Paulo).
MRC