Hanwha Total Petrochemical will invest over $300m to expand polymer production at its South Korean integrated refining and petrochemicals platform located in Daesan.
Established in 2003, Hanwha Total Petrochemical is 50/50 joint venture owned by South Korean business conglomerate Hanwha and French oil and gas giant Total.
Total says that the expansion work will increase the facility’s polyethylene capacity by over 50% by the end of 2019, to 1.1 million tons per year.
This new project will add to the steam cracker expansion and flexibilisation project that was launched earlier this year to make the platform process low-cost propane feedstock.
Subsequently, the expanded facility will be able to capture margin along the full ethylene-polyethylene value chain, stated Total.
The additionally produced polyethylene is expected to meet the local South Korean demand and the rapid-growing Chinese market as well.
Total Refining & Chemicals president Bernard Pinatel said: “After the expansion of the steam cracker announced earlier this year, this project will allow us to capture margins across the full value chain at this giant integrated platform.
“We will provide the fast-growing Asian market with high-added-value polymers by leveraging our differentiating technology.”
Hanwha Total Petrochemical plans to deploy the Advanced Double Loop technology licensed by Total and Chevron Phillips Chemical, which will facilitate the production of a broad variety of high-end specialty polyethylenes.
The Daesan platform, which earned around $1bn revenue in 2016, features a condensate splitter, a steam cracker, and polymers, styrene and aromatics units among others.
In April, Hanwha Total Petrochemical had announced an investment of $450m to expand the Daesan platform to increase its ethylene production capacity by 30% to 1.4 million tons per year.
The additional ethylene production is expected to cater to the demand from the domestic market and also the Chinese market.
In 2014, the Daesan refining and petrochemicals platform saw an investment of $2bn to double its production capacity to address the demand for plastics.