Lotte Chemical: New Cracker Commissioned in Indonesia

The South Korean chemical group Lotte Chemical Corp. (LCC) has commissioned a new naphtha cracker at the Merak/Cilegon site on the Indonesian island of Java.

This was announced by the Malaysian group subsidiary Lotte Chemical Titan Holding (LCTH) in a stock exchange filing last week. The cracker was constructed as part of the Lotte Chemical Indonesia New Ethylene (LINE) project by the joint venture Lotte Chemical Indonesia (LCI), in which LCTH holds a 51% stake, the parent company LCC 24%, and other partners a total of 25%.

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The official groundbreaking for the LINE project already took place at the end of 2018, but the actual construction work only began in November 2021. The new naphtha cracker has capacities for the production of 1 million tonnes of ethylene, 520,000 tonnes of propylene, and 140,000 tonnes of butadiene per year. Furthermore, the petrochemical complex will also include facilities for the production of 350,000 tonnes of polypropylene (PP) annually.

With the commissioning of the cracker, LCTH completes the vertical integration of its existing polyethylene plants in Cilegon, which have capacities for around 450,000 tonnes of HDPE and LLDPE annually and were previously supplied with the feedstock ethylene via imports. In addition, the new cracker is also intended to supply other petrochemical plants in Indonesia and other countries in the region.

The total cost of the LINE project is stated as $3.95 billion in the current report. According to media reports, this makes it Lotte Chemical's largest investment outside of Korea.

Lotte Chemical belongs to the Korean Lotte Group and is headquartered in Seoul. The group produces ethylene, polyethylene, propylene, polypropylene, butadiene, PTA, MEG, PET, polycarbonates, and benzene, among other things, at sites in South Korea, China, Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam, India, Uzbekistan, Turkey, Hungary, the USA, and Mexico.

More information: www.lottechem.com, www.lottechem.my, www.lottechem.id

Lotte Chemical, Seoul, Korea