MOSCOW (MRC) -- Maire Tecnimont S.p.A. announced that its subsidiaries Tecnimont S.p.A. and Mumbai-based Tecnimont Private Limited have been awarded an EPCC (Engineering, Procurement, Construction and Commissioning) Lump Sum contract by Indian Oil Corporation Limited (IOCL), for the implementation of a new paraxylene (PX) plant and the relevant offsites facilities, according to Kemicalinfo.
The plant will be located in Paradip, in the State of Odisha, in Eastern India. The overall value of the contract is about USD450 million.
The scope of work entails Engineering, Procurement, Construction and Commissioning activities up to the Performance Guarantees Test Run. Once completed, the new PX plant will have a capacity of 800,000 tons per year.
The time schedule is 33 months for Mechanical Completion from the award date, the company said.
The PX produced will be used to feed the adjacent PTA (Purified Terephthalic Acid) unit, thus ensuring availability of world-class feedstock that will provide a significant boost to India’s manufacturing industry, it added.
As MRC informed before, in March 2021, Indian Oil announced plans to expand the capacity of its refinery at Panipat, India, from 15 million metric tons/year (MMt/y), to 25 MMt/y. The company will also build a polypropylene (PP) unit and a catalytic dewaxing unit at the site. The cost of the project is 329.46 billion Indian rupees (USD4.45 billion). The plan is the latest in a series of projects approved by Indian Oil to improve integration with petrochemicals at the company's refinery sites. The capacity of the planned PP facility has not been disclosed.
PX is a feedstock for the production of purified terephthalic acid (PTA). PTA is used to produce polyethylene terephthalate (PET), which, in its turn, is used in the manufacturing of plastic bottles, films, packaging containers, in the textile and food industries.
According to MRC's ScanPlast report, Russia's estimated PET consumption reached 64,750 tonnes in March 2021, which corresponds to the last year's figure (64,520 tonnes). Overall estimated PET consumption in Russia decreased by 5% year on year to 182,300 tonnes in January-March, 2021.
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