Philippine petrochemical producer JG Summit has delayed the expansion of its petrochemical capacity from this year's current fourth quarter to 2021.
Prolonged lockdown restrictions and control measures because of the Covid-19 pandemic has made it difficult to find external workers for the Batangas plant expansion work. The delayed arrival of foreign workers and imported plant equipment has created longer delays in the start-up of all new facilities.
The start-up of its new aromatics and butadiene (BD) extraction units will be delayed by at least six months from this year's fourth quarter to next year's second half. The aromatics unit can produce up to 90,000 t/yr of benzene, 50,000 t/yr of toluene and 30,000 t/yr of mixed xylenes. The BD unit has nameplate capacity of 70,000 t/yr of BD and 110,000 t/yr of raffinate-1.
The start-up of its new 250,000 t/yr high-density polyethylene plant, which uses the Chevron Phillips Chemical's Martech technology, will also be delayed from the third quarter of 2021 to the first quarter of 2022.
JG Summit has earlier planned to expand its polypropylene (PP) output to 300,000 t/yr by December 2020 through debottlenecking of its existing 190,000 t/yr PP plant but postponed the expansion to March 2021.
The delay in JG Summit's PP expansion plans means there will not be any new PP capacity in southeast Asia until next year. But the commissioning of Wanhua Chemical's 300,000 t/yr PP plant and Dongming Petrochemical's 200,000 t/yr PP plant in China in late November and early December is expected to ease supplies in the overall Asian market.
Southeast Asia's PP raffia prices yesterday rose by $290/t over the past three months to $1,200-1,220/t cfr for dutiable supplies, according to Argus data. Unforeseen production disruptions in southeast Asia during September-December resulted in supplies continuously lagging demand.
