ECI, an American factory builder, said that it will build two EVA factories with an annual output of 200,000 tons in Qinzhou, Guangxi, China with its technical and sales partner Repsol, a Spanish petrochemical giant.
ECI did not disclose the customer’s name, but its identity should be clear. Guangxi Petrochemical, a subsidiary of PetroChina, started building a petrochemical plant last year around the plant’s 1.2 million mt/year ethylene capacity naphtha cracker. The cracker is supplied by an adjacent refinery in the northern part of the Qinzhou Port Industrial Zone.
The petrochemical refining and chemical integration transformation and upgrading project is expected to start production in 2025 at a price of approximately 4.5 billion euros (4.2 billion euros), including downstream assets of 450,000 tons/year of high-density polyethylene (HDPE), 500,000 tons/year HD/LLDPE swing system, two 300,000 tons/year polypropylene production lines, 300,000 tons/year aromatics extraction, 160,000 tons/year butadiene, and undisclosed styrene extraction hydrogenation capacity.
The two EVA lines were previously described as having capacities of 100,000 t/y and 200,000 t/y, but have apparently been expanded into two lines, the latter with a capacity of 200,000 t/y.
Guangxi Huayi New Materials Co., Ltd. has commissioned a nearby propane dehydrogenation unit at the end of 2022, with a C3 capacity of 750,000 tons/year.
ECI has also been building a 300,000 t/yr LDPE/EVA swing unit for Shandong Yulong Petrochemical since 2021 as part of a similarly large-scale project in northeast Shandong province.
