China's Ningxia Baofeng started up early this week its new methanol-to-olefins (MTO) unit at Yinchuan in northwest China's Ningxia.
Baofeng has already raised its operating rate to about 80pc as of today.
The MTO unit has 300,000 t/yr of ethylene and 300,000 t/yr of propylene capacity, which are integrated to downstream 300,000 t/yr polyethylene and 300,000 t/yr polypropylene capacities.
The MTO unit is part of Ningxia Baofeng's coal-to-olefins (CTO) complex. But the start-up schedule of its upstream integrated 1.8mn t/yr methanol plant has been delayed to April next year. As a result, Ningxia Baofeng needs to buy 150,000 t/month of merchant methanol from the domestic market until next April.
Its restocking activity since last week have significantly tightened domestic supplies in northwest China. The ex-tank prices in Inner Mongolia and north China's Shaanxi province rose this week to 1,900-2,000 yuan/t, or $216-228/t on an import parity basis, a sharp hike of Yn100-140/t or 7pc from last week.
Ningxia Baofeng's first CTO plant, with a similar 1.8mn t/yr of methanol and 600,000 t/yr of olefins capacity, started up in November 2014.
