JBF Industries To Commercially Produce PTA At Mangalore Plant By March 2018

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JBF Industries To Commercially Produce PTA At Mangalore Plant By March 2018

Mumbai-headquartered JBF Industries plans production of commercial volumes at its new 1.25 million mt/year purified terephthalic acid (PTA) plant at Mangalore in Karnataka, by the end of March 2018, a company official has informed.

Incidentally, its start-up has been repeatedly delayed since commissioning was announced on March 31. There is still some uncertainty around the precise start date, but the construction of the plant is almost complete, the official stated.

PTA produced by the JBF Industries plant is expected to supply downstream polyethylene terephthalate (PET) plants owned by the company's subsidiaries.

JBF Industries has a 608,000 mt/year polyethylene terephthalate (PET) chips plant at Sarigam in Gujarat and a 352,000 mt/year of polyester yarn and texturised yarn at the union territory of Silvassa, near Gujarat. It also has a 400,000 mt/year PET plant in the UAE and a 475,000 mt/year PET facility in Belgium.

Production at the JBF PTA plant is being closely watched by the paraxylene market because most of the neighboring ONGC Mangalore Petrochemicals Ltd's paraxylene (PX) production, which is currently exported, will be diverted to the JBF PTA plant.

Presently, ONGC Mangalore Petrochemical Limited's paraxylene (PX) output mostly goes to Ningbo or Dalian in China.