Nova Chemicals has placed force majeure supply limits on polyethylene resins made at its site in Moore Township, Ontario.
The force majeure includes all grades of high and low density PE produced in Moore, officials with Nova in Calgary said in a Sept. 14 letter to customers obtained by Plastics News.
They added that the limits were needed because of "an unplanned outage" at the firm's ethylene cracker in Corunna, Ontario, near Sarnia. That cracker supplies ethylene to Nova's PE facilities in the region.
Officials said that there were no injuries or environmental concerns from the outage and the event "does not affect any of our other [PE] products at this time." The estimated duration of the force majeure is unknown.
"We currently have no firm indication as to what extent we will be able to supply [customers'] needs during this force majeure," officials said. "We are working diligently to rectify the situation."
It's the second time this year that Nova's Moore site has operated under supply limits because of an ethylene supply issue in Corunna. The previous force majeure lasted from late March until the end of May. Nova operates about 550 million pounds of annual HDPE capacity and about 480 million pounds of LDPE capacity in Moore.
The current outage will further tighten a North American PE market that already had been tightening because of increased sales into export markets. These conditions allowed regional PE makers to gain a 3-cent per pound price increase in August.
Regional PE supplies also were tightened in late August when Chevron Phillips Chemical Co. placed force majeure supply limits on HDPE made at one of the firm's plants in Orange, Texas. That declaration was the result of an equipment failure.