Westlake restarts operations at Kentucky, force majeure continues

05-Aug-16

Westlake Chemical has restarted operations at its PVC plant on July 18 at its Kentucky facility, as per Platts. However, the force majeure continues. "The force majeure that was declared at the Calvert City complex by Westlake Chemical Corporation due to the incident on June 1, 2016, is still in place," as per an email by spokeswoman Erika Soechting.

Market sources said PVC production and sales at the complex have started but are still in limited volumes. The company confirmed production of PVC in its second-quarter earnings call. The unplanned outage had shut operations of the entire complex, which temporarily stopped production of ethylene dichloride, vinyl chloride monomer, chlor-alkali and PVC resins, the company said. The Calvert City complex is home to a vinyls complex with chlor-alkali capacity of 300,00 ECU/year and PVC capacity of 260,000 m tpa.