MOSCOW (MRC) -- Nghi Son Refinery and Petrochemical (NSRP) continues to face production hiccups weeks after an unspecified technical issue, which hit the plant on 26 March and forced the producer to shut its polypropylene (PP) plant, according to CommoPlast.
According to sources close to the maker, the 370,000 tons/year PP unit remained offline in late April and might not be able to restore the normal run rate until mid-May 2022.
Nghi Son has not been able to operate smoothly since the beginning of the year. In February, the company slashed operating rates by 50% as a result of financial issues at the refinery and was only able to operate for several weeks before being shut down again.
As MRC reported earlier, NSRP shut its new PP plant in Vietnam for maintenance on 24 August, 2021, instead of the initially scheduled date of 17 August, for approximately three weeks. The company decided to postpone the maintenance shutdown at this plant by one week from the previous schedule due to the COVID-19 related lockdown. Thus, the new PP plant came back on-line in mid-September, 2021.
We remind that Vietnam’s Nghi Son oil refinery officially began commercial production from 14 November 2018, following months of tests. The USD9 billion refinery is 35.1% owned by Japan’s Idemitsu Kosan Co, 35.1% - by Kuwait Petroleum, 25.1% - by PetroVietnam and 4.7% - by Mitsui Chemicals Inc.
According to MRC's ScanPlast report, PP shipments to the Russian market totalled 1,494.280 tonnes in 2021, up by 21% year on year. Deliveries of homopolymer PP and PP block copolymers increased, whreas.shipments of PP random copolymers decreased significantly.
MRC