Haldia Petrochemicals declares force majeure on supplies from its petchem complex in Haldia

   2020-03-26 19:03

MOSCOW (MRC) — India’s private-sector Haldia Petrochemicals (HPL) declared force majeure on supplies on 23 March, a day before the lockdown announcement in the country, reported Argus.

The Indian government announced a complete lockdown from midnight 25 March for 21 days



HPL’s cracker complex is expected to close soon, and it is unclear when operations will resume. HPL’s sister firm, purified terephthalic acid (PTA) producer MCPI, which has around 1.27mn t/yr of capacity in West Bengal, has also declared force majeure and is expected to completely shut down operations.

HPL operates a cracker with nameplate capacity of 700,000 t/yr of ethylene, 340,000 t/yr of propylene, 150,000 t/yr of benzene, 100,000 t/yr of butadiene and 98,000 t/yr of methyl tert-butyl ether (MTBE). The producer also has 350,000 t/yr polypropylene, 345,000 t/yr high-density polyethylene (HDPE) and swing 365,000 t/yr linear low-density polyethylene (LLDPE) production lines.

As MRC wrote before, on 20 September 2019, a major fire broke out at Haldia Petrochemicals’ cracker in India. The company’s plant restarted operations in early October, 2019, after a nearly 10-day closure caused by a September 20 fire that had claimed the lives of two employees.

Ethylene and propylene are feedstocks for producing polyethylene (PE) and polypropylene (PP).

According to MRC’s ScanPlast report, Russia’s estimated PE consumption totalled 2,093,260 tonnes in 2019, up by 6% year on year. Shipments of all PE grades increased. PE shipments rose from both domestic producers and foreign suppliers. The estimated PP consumption in the Russian market was 1,260,400 tonnes in January-December 2019, up by 4% year on year. Supply of almost all grades of propylene polymers increased, except for statistical copolymers of propylene (PP random copolymers).

Haldia Petrochemicals Ltd is a modern naphtha based petrochemical complex at Haldia, West Bengal, India. Haldia has played the role of a catalyst in emergence of more than 500 downstream processing industries in West Bengal with a capacity to process more than 3,50,000 TPA of polymers, among which are PE and PP.


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