Russia's largest expandable polystyrene producer Sibur said Tuesday it has started up its newly expanded EPS line at its Perm facility.
The new line, which utilizes Sunpor's Alphapor technology, has a capacity of 50,000 mt/year and coupled with Sibur's existing production at Perm, brings the company's total EPS capacity to 100,000 mt/year.
The new Rb4.1 billion ($132 million) EPS line marks the second phase of Sibur's styrenics expansion project. In the first phase, Sibur brought onstream a new 135,000 mt/year styrene monomer plant and a 220,000 mt/year ethyl-benzene plant.
The company started production of ethyl-benzene, styrene monomer and expandable polystyrene at the site in the fourth quarter of 2010.
The unit -- which produces 220,000 mt/year of ethyl-benzene -- replaced an older unit at the site, which produced 120,000 mt/year. The total investment in all the styrenics projects was estimated at Rb8.6 billion.
"Sibur continues efforts aimed at full upgrade and capacity expansion across its production chain, from processing of associated petroleum gas to production of polymers," Dmitry Konov, Chief Executive Officer of Sibur said in a statement. "Experience of the Western Europe and the USA shows that expandable polystyrene has great potential in energy-efficient insulation in the housing and utilities industry, and we hope that this potential will be fully unlocked in Russia."
Sibur's EPS product are mainly marketed into the US, France, Italy, Germany and Poland.
