Jurong Aromatics halts Singapore plant operations on back of unfavorable market conditions

It only started production in September.

Jurong Aromatics Corporation, the operator of Singapore’s largest aromatics facility to date, today revealed that it is halting the operations of its plant in Jurong Island starting mid-December.

''Jurong Aromatics Corporation is taking advantage of the current unfavourable market for petrochemicals to re-calibrate our production process to improve efficiency. As such, we will temporarily halt plant operations from mid December 2014,” a JAC spokesperson told SBR.

The plant began production in September 2014 and has the capacity to produce 1.5 million tonnes of aromatics and 2.5 million tonnes of transportation fuels per year.

The plant  is located on a 58-hectare site on Jurong Island and has an investment value of $3.16 billion (US$2.4b). It is one of the largest integrated aromatics plants in the world and is designed to process 4.5 million tonnes of condensate feedstock per annum.

JAC also stressed that it will still deploy its full workforce to continually fine-tune its operations.

“Our plant has a strategic advantage as it has been purposefully designed to allow flexibility in using alternative feedstock,' JAC’s spokesperson said.