Borealis said that it has reached an important milestone in the construction of its propane dehydrogenation (PDH) plant at Kallo, Belgium, said Chemweek.
The propylene splitter, one of the largest equipment items ever delivered to the port of Antwerp in one piece by ship, was successfully transported from the quay to the Borealis site at Kallo. The splitter is a distillation column, needed to split propane from propylene. It has a length of 105 meters, width of 10 meters and weight of 1,600 metric tons.
The PDH plant is Borealis’s most significant investment in Europe. The plant will have a targeted production capacity of 750,000 metric tons/year of propylene, making it one of the largest and most efficient facilities in the world. Production is expected to start by the end of 2022.
As MRC informed earlier, Borealis would not proceed with the development of a multi-billion-dollar integrated steam cracker and polyethylene (PE) project in Kazakhstan.
Ethylene and propylene are feedstocks for producing polyethylene (PE) and polypropylene (PP).
According to MRC’s ScanPlast report, Russia’s estimated PE consumption totalled 557,060 tonnes in the first three month of 2020, up by 7% year on year. High density polyethylene (HDPE) and linear low density polyethylene (LLDPE) shipments rose because of the increased capacity utilisation at ZapSibNeftekhim. Demand for LDPE subsided. At the same time, PP shipments to the Russian market was 267,630 tonnes in January-March 2020, down 20% year on year. Homopolymer PP and PP block copolymers accounted for the main decrease in imports.
By: Anna Larionova
Source: mrcplast
Plastics recycling markets in the EU and UK remain under significant pressure, with weak demand due to unclarity in regulations and low-cost virgin imports making the sector commercially uninvestable without policy changes.
The acquisition of DOMO EM follows the completion of Lone Star’s acquisition of RadiciGroup, with its High Performance Polymers and Specialty Chemicals business areas. The DOMO EM and RadiciGroup businesses will be combined and will then benefit from a broad and complementary product portfolio.
Trinseo PLC (Wayne, Pennsylvania), a producer of engineering resins, has struck a deal with its lenders for a comprehensive restructuring aimed at reducing the company’s debt by $2 billion, reducing its annual interest expense by $140 million and allowing it to operate from a positive free cash flow position.
