By Kang Seung-woo
Hyundai Oilbank has broken ground on a new 600 billion won ($567.6 million) BTX plant together with Japan’s Cosmos Oil in a coastal city 137 kilometers southwest of Seoul, Hyundai said Sunday.
BTX, a main raw material for synthetic fiber, is a composite mix of benzene, toluene and p-xylene.
The facility, scheduled for completion by June 2013 in Daesan, South Chungcheong Province, will be the company’s second BTX plant and will have an annual capacity of 1 million tons, which will elevate Hyundai Oilbank’s BTX yearly output to 1.5 million tons.
The nation’s No. 4 oil refiner, an affiliate of global leading shipyard Hyundai Heavy Industries, currently operates a plant with an annual capacity of half a million tons.
The Seoul-based refiner plans to sell the entire production from the new facilities to China, Taiwan and Europe amid surging prices and expects to rake in about a 1 trillion won profit per annum.
“We expect to boost national competitiveness by exporting the total output from the new plant,” said Hyundai Oilbank CEO Kwon Oh-gap who took charge of the outfit last year.
In 2009, Hyundai Oilbank set up a joint venture with its Japanese partner and it is producing a combined 500,000 tons of p-xylene and benzene.
Hyundai said that as its second BTX plant will take advantage of products from Cosmos Oil as its main material, it will not be heavily affected by changing commodity prices and both will have synergy by taking on joint marketing.