SP Chemical (Taixing), a private company wholly owned by Singaporean firm SP Chemical, has started commercial runs at a 250,000 t/yr polyvinyl chloride (PVC) unit in China.
This came after a successful trial run at the unit in Taixing county, Jiangsu province on 27 December. Current operating rates at the producer's new PVC plant were at 40-50pc.
SP Chemical originally planned to start up two new PVC units at the end of this year, each with a 250,000 t/yr output, fed with its own existing 900,000 t/yr vinyl chloride monomer capacity. Construction of both PVC units were completed in mid-November, but another 250,000 t/yr PVC unit at the same site has yet to start operating because of sluggish PVC demand and squeezed margins.
The weekly suspension ethylene-based PVC pipe ex-works China price was at 5,090-5,700 yuan/t or an import parity of $562-632/t on 29 December, down by Yn400-660/t or $64-93/t compared with a year earlier.
