Japanese petrochemical maker Showa Denko KK plans to shut its Oita plant in southern Japan. The plant is the company's sole facility in Oita, and has a capacity to produce 653,000 tpa of ethylene. The plant will be shut for about 40 days for planned maintenance in mid-March 2006. Showa will spend 2 billion yen (US$17.3 million) on ethylene capacity expansion by about 4% by June 2006 and increase its ability to use cheaper feedstock as an alternative to naphtha.
After the upgrades, the plant's ethylene production capacity will increase by 24,000 tpa from the current 581,000, and the cracker will be able to switch as much as 50% of its feedstock use (from the current 30%) to non-naphtha materials such as butane, natural gas liquid and gas oil.
21-Oct-05 
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