Czech Unipetrol’s delayed PE3 plant to start up in H1 – analyst

LONDON (ICIS)–Unipetrol’s delayed flagship Polyethylene 3 (PE3) plant in the Czech Republic is to start up in the first half of 2019, an chemicals equity analyst said on Friday.

The company has throughout this year declined to comment on the status of the koruna (Kc) 8.5bn ($379.3m) project in Litvinov, which had an initial launch date of Q1 2018.

However, Tamas Pletser, an analyst at investment bank Erste Investment, said that the construction had entered the final phase and the facility would be ready in the first half of 2020.

Unipetrol did not respond to a request for comment.

The PE facility is expected to have a capacity of 270,000 tonnes/year. It is set to be the most expensive petrochemical investment in the Czech Republic to date.

At the end of 2018, Unipetrol became no longer subject to listed company reporting requirements after its owner, Poland’s state-controlled oil and petrochemicals major PKN Orlen took full control and and delisted it.

When announced in 2015, PE3 was given the target completion date of within the first quarter of 2018.

Project difficulties, such as the bankruptcy of an important sub-contractor, subsequently caused delays.

By July 2018, Unipetrol said PE3 was 88%-complete and the finish line was planned for spring 2019.

However, there has been no launch announcement from the company in 2019.

Oleg Galbur, an analyst at investment bank Raiffeisen Centrobank (RCB), said there had not been an impact on petrochemicals output in Q3 from PE3 “so probably there are delays with commissioning” of the new capacities.

In September 2017, Unipetrol said that on the back of healthy PE market it was to reverse a plan to decommission its 120,000-tonne/year PE1 installation, in tandem with the PE3 production start.

On paper, the change of plan would give Unipetrol a total PE capacity of 590,000 tonnes/year, although cracker constraints would limit PE1 use.

($1 = Kc22.41)