DATE : 2014-02-11
South Korea’s Asia Acetyls Co (Asacco) shut its 210,000 tonne/year vinyl acetate monomer (VAM) plant in Ulsan on Monday following a power failure, a company official said on Tuesday.
“Power failure happened on Monday morning in the Ulsan petrochemical complex,” the source said, adding that the outage is expected to last several days.
But the plant will resume production this week, the source said.
“Our [VAM] inventory went down below critical level because we kept low levels even before the plant shut,” the source said.
“So we have to cut export volume and re-arrange shipping schedule for February and March,” he added.
Prior to the outage, the VAM plant was operating at 90-95% of capacity since January amid buoyant domestic demand in South Korea.
An upstream 600,000 tonne/year acetic acid plant operated by Samsung BP Chemicals Co at the site was not shut by the power outage, but it is currently operating at below half its capacity, the source said.
“The acetic acid plant did not shut, but went down to very low production rate,” he said, adding that the plant’s run rate should improve to pre-power outage levels within the week.
SOURCE Icis News