OQ successfully starts up two polyethylene plants

BUSINESS REPORTER

MUSCAT, FEb 4

OQ, the integrated energy group of the Sultanate of Oman, has successfully started up two world-scale plants with full-density polyethylene product capabilities allowing for product slate flexibility to cover a wide range of HDPE and LLDPE applications — including both conventional and specialty grades. This is part of the progress OQ is making towards a more sustainable future of their polymer products and polymer production.

OQ is utilising the proprietary UNIPOL PE process of Houston-based Univation Technologies for its two 440,000 TPY polyethylene (PE) plants located within the Liwa Plastics Industrial Complex in Sohar Industrial Port.

OQ has chosen a full range of Univation’s technology platforms including Prodigy Bimodal HDPE Technology to enable production of high-performance bimodal HDPE products including PE100 pipe and bimodal HDPE film applications. Moreover, OQ will access Univation’s Acclaim K-100 HDPE Technology which enables a broad range of unimodal HDPE products including advantaged HDPE films and durable large part blow molding articles.

OQ further selected Univation’s UCAT Resin Technology which satisfies a wide array of large-volume applications including highly competitive HDPE and LLDPE products. Additionally, OQ started metallocene PE production using Univation’s XCAT Metallocene PE Technology to meet the growing demand for metallocene-based films which includes sustainable, high-performance food packaging solutions and durable bulk packaging applications.

Luis Cirihal, President of Univation Technologies, commented, “We are pleased to collaborate with OQ on the successful start-up and ongoing operation of these new reactor lines. Our dedicated Univation teams continue to be focused on supporting OQ as they ramp up manufacturing capabilities across multiple PE product families licensed for the two units. We know that OQ will want to take full advantage of both of these flexible reactor platforms to produce highly competitive PE products in demand by their customers today. OQ can also have full confidence that these same reactor lines have tremendous capabilities to rapidly adjust product mixes to capture new, emerging customer opportunities in the future.”

Khalid al Ghaithi, Liwa Plastics Operation — Vice-President, also commented, “Selecting a proven technology platform with a demonstrated credibility for large capacity designs was an important criterion for OQ. Additionally, we also wanted to choose a technology licensor that has an undisputed record of delivering successful world-scale, multi-reactor projects — and we are well-pleased with our choice of Univation Technologies and Unipol PE Technology for the Sohar Industrial Complex project. Our team is excited and passionate about introducing our high-quality products into the market to satisfy both regional PE demand while also providing for export-ready products to meet our business objectives of serving critical customers in key export regions.”