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Borouge to Continue with Expansion Plans

DUBAI — Petrochemicals company Borouge, a joint venture between Abu Dhabi National Oil Company and European plastics giant Borealis, said on Monday it is unfazed by the global economic meltdown and will continue expansion plans in China while eyeing new logistics hub in South East Asia and South Asia.

“Despite the current slowdown, we are seeing a lot of potential within the Middle East as well as in markets outside of the region. We will continue to invest heavily in all aspects of our business and work closely with our customers and business partners,” said Borouge chief executive William Yau, adding “our investments will run into a couple of billion dollars.”

“We want to expand our markets and we have on our radar, markets which include South East Asia and South Asia.”

In November, Borouge started the construction of a regional logistics hub in Shanghai, China, which will have an annual capacity of 600,000 tonnes. It is already constructing a 50,000-tonne compounding plant also in Shanghai. Another hub is being set up in the province of Guangzhou with a capacity of 300,000 tonnes.

Yau said the setting up of logistics hubs in China complements the ongoing Borouge 2 expansion of its petrochemical complex in Ruwais plant in Abu Dhabi. When completed, the company will be able to more than triple its production capacity to 2.5 million tonnes by mid-2010 from 650,000 tonnes.

He said the Borouge 2 expansion programme, once fully operational, will produce annually 1.4 million tonnes of ethylene, 540,000 tonnes of polyethylene, and 800,000 tonnes of polypropolene. Yau said that Borouge is also revisiting its Borouge 3 expansion programme which aims to raise capacity to 4.5 million tonnes. “We are still in the feasibility stage and we hope to speed up the evaluation process,” implying that new market realities have to be incorporated in the final plan. “We are still very optimistic, our growth expectations are high,” said Yau. Borouge’s highly-diversified products include high-value infrastructure applications, including water, gas and industrial pipe systems, power and communication cables and automotive components.

rocel@khaleejtimes.com