Haldia Petrochemicals, one of India’s biggest petrochemicals companies, looks to raise trading volumes by 30% and hire more traders as it expands in the key Asian petrochemicals market, sources with knowledge of the plans told Reuters on Wednesday.
Haldia Petrochemicals, majority owned by U.S.-based private equity firm The Chatterjee Group (TCG), has a naphtha cracker complex at Haldia, West Bengal, some 80 miles from Kolkata.
The petrochemicals complex includes an ethylene plant with a capacity of 700,000 metric tons per year, with chemical processing capacity of 491,000 tons annually, and approximately 1 million tons of annual polymer processing capacity.
Haldia Petrochemicals’ unit in Singapore, HPL Global, now aims to boost trading volumes by 30% to up to 2 million tons and double the number of its traders, according to Reuters’ sources.
India should boost its petrochemicals production to meet local demand and counter China’s growing global lead in the sector, a senior executive at India’s top private refiner, Reliance Industries, said earlier this year.
India needs to bolster its petrochemicals presence as China is taking over “the entire petrochemical industry”, Vikram Sampat, senior vice-president, strategy and business development, for the polyester chain at Reliance Industries, said at an industry conference, as carried by Reuters.
China’s petrochemicals expansion has created a surplus on the market in the past year, reducing global margins.
In India, petrochemicals demand is set to surge with robust economic growth in the country.
As a result, India is positioning itself for a petrochemical boom, with $87 billion expected over the next decade to meet surging demand. As more of its citizens rise into the middle class, the need for petrochemical-based products—from plastics to fertilizers—is set to soar. According to India’s oil minister, Hardeep Singh Puri, this growing demand opens a window for significant investment as India’s per capita consumption of petrochemicals continues to lag behind developed nations.
By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com
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