Soo-young Huh, chief executive of Lotte Chemical, said in a recent meeting at the Asian Petrochemical Industry conference that the company aims to increase ethylene production capacity, and is promoting a global production plant expansion program, including several major projects, to enhance the company's competitiveness. Soo-young Huh said the company's petrochemical project in d ' Legon, Indonesia, is in the front-end engineering phase, co-developed by Lotte Chemical and its subsidiaries Lotte Chemical Titan, including a steam cracker with an annual output of 1 million tonnes of ethylene and 500,000 tonnes of propylene.
According to the plan, the project will be put into operation in 2023 to provide raw materials for the downstream plant of Shiba d ' Legon. Another major ongoing project is its joint venture with Hyundai Oilbank Corporation in South Korea, which is under construction. The joint venture, Rakuten shares 40%, the remaining shares for Hyundai Oilbank Company held. The two sides will invest 2.7 trillion trillion won (about $2.4 billion) in the construction of related petrochemical projects, planned to be operational in 2022.
The company will use naphtha and residue as raw materials to produce 750,000 tons/year of ethylene, 390,000 tons/year of propylene, 120,000 tons/year of butadiene, and 750,000 tons/year of polyethylene (PE) and 400,000 tons/year of polypropylene (PP). Soo-young huh also introduced Lotte Chemical (holding 90%) and the US West Lake Chemistry (holding 10%) in the United States Louisiana Lake Charles co-built petrochemical project. The project will start production in February 2019, including a 1 million-ton/year ethylene cracker. He said the project produced 50%
Ethylene will supply its downstream 700,000 tons/year ethylene glycol plant as raw material, according to the shareholding ratio, Xihu Chemical will receive 10% of ethylene, the project remaining 40% ethylene will be sold to the West Lake chemical for its use. At the same time, Lotte Chemical is expanding its petrochemical integration plant in Yeosu, South Korea, which will increase its ethylene production capacity by 200,000 tonnes/year and is scheduled to be completed by October this year. The project will enable Leshan chemical to increase ethylene production capacity in Lishui to 1.2 million tonnes/year. Soo-young Huh said that after the completion of these expansion projects, the production capacity of Lotte chemical olefin will increase significantly. For example, the company has 1.1 million tonnes/year ethylene production capacity in Dashan and holds 25% of the 400,000 tonnes/year ethylene integration plant in Uzbekistan. In Malaysia Pasir Gudang, the Rakuten subsidiary Lotte Chemical Titan recently completed the expansion, ethylene production capacity will reach 900,000 tons/year. Together with projects in the United States and Indonesia, Lotte Chemical will increase the global ethylene output to about 5.3 million tonnes/year. He said: ' This does not include projects that are built with modern Oilbank.
' In addition to substantially increasing ethylene production capacity, Lotte Chemical is also increasing the investment and expansion of downstream products. Soo-young Huh said that the company completed in August this year the Malaysian Pasir Gudang 200,000 tons/year PP plant construction, and is Lishui using Asahi Kasei technology to build a set of 110,000 tons/year of polycarbonate (PC) device, planned to be completed in the second half of next year into production.
Together with the company's 3 PC production lines currently operating in Yeosu, Rakuten Chemical will have a total PC capacity of 480,000 tonnes/year. In addition, the company's 200,000 t/A-xylene device in Ulsan, Korea, will start production in the second half of next year. Lotte Chemical also announced recently that it will acquire two ABS manufacturers in Indonesia, and that its production plants are currently discontinued. Soo-young Huh said the acquisition has not been finalized, but plans to further expand ABS capacity.
Last November, Lotte Chemical also launched a 200,000-ton/year Elastomer factory in Lishui with joint venture partner Italy Versalis. Lotte Chemical global expansion boosts competitiveness