Speaker: India needs massive growth in ethylene capacity

Singapore — India needs to add a world-scale ethylene complex turning out 2.64 billion pounds (1.2 million metric tons) per year, every year, to meet rising demand for plastics, based on estimated annual economic growth of 7 percent, a senior Indian petrochemical industry executive said at a recent conference.

Siddharta Mitra, executive director at the New Delhi-based Indian Oil Corp. Ltd., said that one of those facilities would be needed for every kilogram increase in the country's per capita demand for plastics, which currently stands well below the world average. He did not say how many years of growth would be needed.

IOC has a $5 billion petrochemical investment plan from 2015 to 2022, including a 770 million pound (350,000 tonnes) per year polypropylene facility as part of a 6.61 billion pound (3 million tonnes) per year crude oil refinery at Baroni, he said.

The company also plans to expand its cracker at Panipat to 2.64 billion pounds a year by 2019, and is building a PP unit in Paradeep. The company has been expanding into polymers in recent years to try to get more value from its crackers.

Still, India as a whole remains a net importer of plastics, with annual demand estimated at 26.4 billion pounds (12 million tonnes) and domestic production of only about 19.8 billion pounds (9 million tonnes), according to Vikram Sampat, vice president and head of aromatics at Reliance Industries, the country's largest plastics maker.

India's petrochemical growth will average 8 to 10 percent per year, he said in an address at the Asia Chemical Conference, sponsored by IHS Chemicals, Nov. 5-6 in Singapore.

Both executives said they are confident of long-term demand for plastics in the country under the government's “Make in India” initiative, even amid current economic uncertainty.

India has a per capita plastics consumption of about 18 pounds (8 kilograms) a year, compared with a global average of 55 pounds (25 kilograms), and accounts for about 3 percent of world petrochemical demand, according to figures presented at the conferences.

Mitra spoke at the Condensate & Naphtha Forum, organized by Conference Connections, Nov. 12-13 in Singapore.