Cepsa to feed San Roque PET plant with 100,000 tpa of PTA

24-Nov-10

Cepsa Quimica's new 150,000 tpa polyethylene terephthalate (PET) plant at San Roque, Spain, will be fed with roughly 100,000 tpa of feedstock from the upstream purified terephthalic acid (PTA) market when it comes online, as per Platts. A start up of 2011 is being targeted, but the acquisition process is still to be completed. Cepsa Quimica had agreed to buy the halted PET production unit from La Seda de Barcelona. This will be the first PET-making facility that Cepsa will own. The agreement is pending La Seda's proposals for restructuring the plant, which has been closed since September 2008. Interestingly, a significant portion of the workforce is understood to have remained active at the plant despite the closure. When complete, this acquisition will make oil refiner Cepsa one of the best-integrated PET producers in the world, with all feedstocks internally integrated bar monoethylene glycol -- an essential feedstock alongside paraxylene.