With a new investment in PET planned in Turkey, the country is set for major changes in its trade flow, reverting from a net importer to a net exporter. A new PET plant from Koksan PET and Plastic Packaging Industry (KOKSAN) was announced last week planned with two PET lines with a combined capacity of 432,000 tpa. The company noted that they will meet Turkey’s entire water bottle chips and film sector chips demand through the new plant. The company also plans to supply PET chips to the polyester synthetic yarn industry. The new production lines, which will be located in Gaziantep, Turkey are expected to be ready in the third quarter of 2012. The company also expects to boost its own PET preform exports to 200,000 tpa. Looking at ChemOrbis PET import statistics, the new plant will surely be able to cover the country’s needs as Turkey imported a total of 156,000 tpa of PET bottle resin in 2010. The new plant also dwarfs existing capacity in the country. In 2009, another new PET plant had come online in Turkey after Meltem Kimya started up their domestic production of 40,000 tpa. The country’s oldest existing PET plant owned now by Artenius has a nameplate capacity of 130,000 tpa. However, before Turkey becomes self sufficient next year, competition is expected to rev up as anti-dumping duties against Asian imports expired in January of this year. Duties of 6.5% had been issued in January 2006 on India, Thailand, Malaysia, China, South Korea, Taiwan and Indonesia. Although Pakistan and Vietnam had been included in the original petition by the former PET producer Advansa, these two countries were exempted from the duties by the Competition Authority of Turkey. The exempt Pakistan was the top exporter to Turkey in 2010 with 55,311 tons. This was followed by Iran, United Arab Emirates and Oman as new plants were built in those countries over the past few years. Vietnam, which had also been exempted was the second top exporter to Turkey in 2009 at 19,821 tons but did not have much of a showing in 2010. Prior to the antidumping duties in 2005, India and Indonesia had taken top spots followed by several European countries who were since shoved out of the market by the Middle East and Iranian capacities. The year 2011 looks set to see another shakeup in the list of PET exporters to Turkey before they are all shoved out by the new domestic capacity.
08-Feb-11 
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