Saudi Polymers has begun marketing product from its new polystyrene plant in March, even though its startup has been delayed, according to sources familiar with the matter.
One polystyrene converter said they had received offers from Saudi Polymers on their general purpose grade polystyrene crystals, but declined to comment on price details or volumes.
The converter said they will receive samples from Saudi Polymers and that it would take three months to test the GPPS crystals, and 9-12 months to test the high impact polystyrene before they could place an order.
Another styrene trader close to the company said the startup of Saudi Polymer's 200,000 mt/year PS plant was "imminent".
The PS plant at Al Jubail was initially due to start commercial production in the first quarter, but that had been delayed to April.
The PS plant was built in tandem with Saudi Polymers' integrated petrochemicals complex in Jubail. Saudi Polymers completed construction of the complex in December and began final commissioning and testing activities.
Saudi Polymers wasn't immediately available for comment.
The PS plant will receive styrene monomer feedstock from Jubail Chevron Philips Company's 777,000 mt/year styrene monomer plant at Al Jubail. Prior to the startup of the PS plant, Chevron Philips had been shipping around 10,000-15,000 mt/month of styrene out to its storage facilities in the Amsterdam, Rotterdam and Antwerp area.
Chevron Philips leased two storage facilities owned by Vopak in the ARA area but gave up on those agreements in 2012 as the excess styrene would be channeled as feed for the PS plant.
Sources in the styrene market said CP Chem was moving 5,000-8,000 mt/month of styrene on a spot basis to Northwest Europe from January to March, most of which was sold on a CIF ARA basis given that it no longer had storage facilities there. But that will cease once the plant starts.
Meanwhile, PS market participants were concerned that the startup of Saudi Polymers' PS plant would depress NWE PS prices as they could be selling their product at a discount to market levels in the initial marketing drive.
Sources said that they would certainly displace a lot of NWE product that went into the Turkish and North African markets given its strategic geographic proximity to those markets.
Saudi Polymers' integrated petrochemicals complex is built around an ethane-propane mix gas cracker, with the capacity to produce 1.165 million mt/year of ethylene and 445,000 mt/year of propylene. The entire olefins production is slated for captive use.
Downstream from the cracker there is also a 400,000 mt/year polypropylene plant and a 100,000 mt/year 1-Hexane plant.
Saudi Polymers is a joint venture between Arabian Chevron Phillips Petrochemical Company, (35%) and National Petrochemical Company, or Petrochem, (65%).
ACP is a wholly owned subsidiary of Chevron Phillips Chemical Company, while Petrochem is a joint stock company fully owned by the Saudi Industrial Investment Group (SIIG).
Chevron Phillips Chemicals will market the polymer output from the complex domestically and in Asia.
