Turkey heads for a series of new petchem capacities by 2020-2023

In Turkey, several companies have revealed their plans to build new petrochemical facilities, with commissioning dates being slated within the next five years. Most of these projects were among 23 investments that have been granted incentive certificates as they were found eligible to benefit from incentives totaling TRY135 billion ($33 billion) within the scope of ‘the project-based incentive scheme’ provided by the Turkish government.

The new facilities are expected to reduce Turkey’s current deficit and ease its dependency on PP imports by 25-40% upon their completion, according to media reports.

Turkey’s Metcap Energy Investments and Qatar’s Fusion Dynamics are planning to invest $5.2 billion in a brand new natural gas and petrochemical complex in Turkey in a 50-50 percent joint venture.

The newly-established joint venture, Metcap Petrochemicals, will develop a natural gas-based chemical plant with a capacity of 1 million tons/year of olefins in the Thrace region. The $4 billion facility will be able to produce 1 million tons/year of PP (600,000 tons/year) and PE (400,000 tons/year) in total. The new facilities will start up in phases beginning from 2020 and all of the planned investments will be finalized by 2023. The company aims to reduce Turkey’s overall imports by $1.4 billion via the project in question.

CFS Istanbul Investment Inc. is planning to build a brand new PP facility in Yumurtalik, Adana. The company received an incentive certificate for constructing the 650,000 tons/year plant. The $1.2 billion facility is slated to start up by the last quarter of 2020.

In February this year, Algeria’s state-owned energy and chemicals group Sonatrach and Turkish Ronesans Endustri and Bayegan signed an agreement to develop a petrochemical facility in Yumurtalik Free Zone. The new facility will cost around $1 billion and include a 550,000 tons/year PDH unit as well as a 450,000 tons/year of PP unit. Algeria is expected to provide propane for the proposed PDH plant to produce PP. Although the exact start date for the construction is yet to be determined, the estimated commissioning will be in 5 years.

In 2017, Turkey imported more than 1.6 million tons of homo-PP and 296,000 tons of PP copolymer, with its overall market size breaching 2 million tons/year when the nameplate production capacity of Petkim is added by 144,000 tons/year. Meanwhile, the imports of homo-PP indicated the largest volume in 17 years.

Turkish PP manufacturers were pleased with the news, saying, “We hope the new capacities form alternative options for us on the longer run once they are brought on-stream. Yet, we don’t expect them to have a major impact on the market anytime soon as it will take time for the projects to be materialized.”

A player commented, “Turkey needs more supplies for PP, LLDPE and HDPE on a domestic basis. The new capacities are likely to affect the PP market more upon their completion and based on the fact that it is the second largest PP importer of the world.”

Turkey’s SASA Polymer also received investment incentive certificate worth around TRY29 billion ($7 billion) to use in a PET investment. The company signed a contract with Germany’s Thyssenkrupp Industrial Solutions to construct two world-scale PET units with a combined capacity of 596,000 tons/year in Adana.