All five South Korean players to proceed with scheduled shutdown of naphtha crackers in April

31-Mar-11

All five local players will proceed with scheduled shutdowns of naphtha crackers for maintenance in April, as per Reuters. Heavy cracker maintenance schedules through May have been weighing on Asian naphtha markets already facing pressure from the loss of Japanese naphtha demand post-earthquake. Samsung Total Co Ltd will shut its 850,000 tpa naphtha cracker for about a month from late April. Honam Petrochemical Corp will shut down a 750,000 tpa naphtha cracker for 10 days from April 1, and another 1 mln tpa cracker for 30 days in October. Korea Petrochemical Ind Co Ltd (KPIC) will shut its 460,000 tpa cracker from April 3-30. YNCC will shut down its largest 857,000 tpa naphtha cracker from April 5 as planned. LG Chem has, on March 17, embarked on a 30 day maintenance shutdown of its 800,000pa naphtha cracker to raise capacity by 100,000 tons.