DATE : 2014-08-11
South Korea’s Samsung BP Chemicals plans to restart its acetic acid and vinyl acetate monomer (VAM) plants in Ulsan by early next week following an unplanned outage on 8 July caused by a power failure, a company official said on Friday.
Samsung BP Chemicals operates a 600,000 tonne/year acetic acid plant, as well as a 210,000 tonne/year VAM plant which is operated by Asian Acetyl Co. (ASACCO) at the Ulsan site. Both are joint venture companies between BP and Samsung.
The plants were shut down due to a power failure caused by a thunderstorm, a company official said on Tuesday this week.
“We’re planning to restart the acetic acid plant by this Sunday or early next week while the VAM plant will be restarted early next week,” he said.
The official said the plant could not be restarted earlier due to “minor problems” adding that there was no damage at the plant.
The producer was seeking to buy a 3,000 tonne prompt loading VAM cargo to meet the shortfall in the domestic market resulting from the unplanned plant outage this week.
SOURCE Icis News