LyondellBasell plans to stop PP plant in Terni

February 26 (polimerica) -- The chemical company has started the employee consultation process regarding a project to permanently shut down the Italian unit. The PP production activities in Italy will be focused on the company's world-scale sites at Ferrara and Brindisi.

⌠Demand for polypropylene continues to be affected by global economic conditions and the resulting market environment has made facilities such as Terni no longer economically viable - said Anton De Vries , LyondellBasell's senior vice president, Olefins and Polyolefins - We expect to be able to meet projected customer demand for polypropylene (including local customers in Terni) with product supplied from our other facilities in Italy".

The Terni plant has a nameplate capacity of 255 KT per year. In conjunction with the shutdown project, LyondellBasell has started consultation with representatives of the employees to determine the appropriate path forward for the employees at the site. The plant currently has approximately 120 permanent employees.

MRC MRC Reference

LyondellBasell. The share in the Russian market in 2008:
PE - 1.4% (including HDPE - 2.5%, LDPE - 0.3%);
PP - 4.1% (including block-copolymers - 9.5%).

Annual sales growth in Russia, during the recent 5 years:
PE - 27%;
PP - 88%.

The leader in the following polymers processing technologies:

pipe extrusion;

film extrusion;

injection molding.

February 26 (prw) -- AWS Eco Plastics has increased production of its rPET pellet (purePET 78). The move follows an announcement from Artenius PET Packaging Europe (APPE) that it is investing to boost UK use of post-consumer recycled PET.

AWS and APPE agreed an exclusive contract for 13,000 tonnes of rPET per annum in 2008 and despite a major fire in August 2009 at its Hemswell site AWS has continued to supply on the contract.

The company is pleased to announce that increasing demand for its purePET 78 from additional customers, as well as APPE, has led to the increase in production from the manufacturing line.

Hemswell site manager, Tony Hayes, said: ⌠I am delighted to see this uplift in tonnage and sales, this compliments the recent increase in output from the plant, largely due to the efforts of my production and engineering teams.

⌠We are now fully operational, 24/7, and if we could run 30 hours a day the output would be sold.

MRC

February 26 (plasteurope) -- Shell Chemicals has declared force majeure on ethylene (C2) and propylene (C3) from its Moerdijk complex in The Netherlands and put all customers on allocation. Output of the site's cracker, with capacity for 900,000 t/y of C2 and 500,000 t/y of C3, had to be reduced following technical problems on 23 February.

A Shell spokesman told that repairs are expected to take around nine days.

MRC

February 26 (plasteurope) -- Ineos ChlorVinyls has announced that it will close its 125,000 t/y PVC plant at Barry, Wales, by the end of Q2 and supply customers from its other UK production units at Runcorn (110,000 t/y) and Newton Aycliffe (250,000 t/y) in England. Ineos, which is the UK's sole PVC producer, said it is adjusting output to reflect steadily declining market demand.

Some sources said the plant had been idled. Business manager Geir Tuft said consolidating PVC operations in the UK will underpin security of supply to customers, while delivering an improved cost base.

MRCMRC Reference

Ineos is a petrochemical group.
In Russia Ineos's interests are represented by Ineos Polyolefins and IneosChlorVinyls.

The share in the Russian market in 2008:
PVC - 4.5%;

polyethylene - 1.9%
(HDPE - 2.8%, LDPE - 1.2%);
polypropylene - 1.4%
(PP-random - 22.1%, PP-impact - 2.0%);
polystyrene - 0.9%.

Imports by polymers processing technologies:
profile extrusion;
pipe extrusion;
film extrusion;
injection molding.

Price hikes are inevitable in the Russian market. Shortage of the polymer in the domestic market caused by reduced output at Russian sites and insufficient imports from Turkmenistan and Ukraine turned out to be the reason of weekly price adjustments.

The market situation is expectedly to be more stable in March; however, prices will be higher than the February maximum. Shipments of Lisichansk raffia to the Russian market have reportedly been resumed this week.

MRC

For more detailed information on the Russian polypropylene market, see Price Report.