IRAN - Tabriz Complex.

Located in East Azerbaijan province, this is Iran's newest petrochemical complex. It was inaugurated on April 7, 1997 by then President Rafsanjani. The plant's Director, Abbas Sedghi, told Iran's news agency 'IRNA' on the same day: "Given the high quality of its products, we expect to export up to $150m in petrochemicals". The complex was originally due to come on stream early in 1993. It cost more than $1.1 bn in hard currency, including $750m obtained through loans. Tabriz has a capacity of 500,000 t/y. Planned expansions would raise this to 750,500 t/y, with construction work underway on units to produce styrene butadiene rubber and styrene butadiene latex. A 100,000 t/y polypropylene unit is also planned at this complex, which should make Iran self-sufficient in polypropylene and would add more than $114m in revenues from this sector. The following are existing and planned capacities at Tabriz (in '000 t/y):

Ethylene                   136
LDPE/HDPE                  100
Butene-1                     7
Benzene                     55
Styrene                     95
Polystyrenes                80
Styrene butadiene rubber    23.5
Styrene butadiene latex     15
Propylene                   56
Polypropylene              100
Cumene                      40
Phenol                      30
Acetone                     18

Project finance has featured a major credit syndicated by 10 banks under Banque Nationale de Paris and Bank Melli Iran, with 85% guaranteed by the French export credit agency COFACE, and Japanese credits arranged by Nissho- Iwai. The first contract went to TPL (Italian unit of Technip, worth $80m for engineering, procurement and supervision of the ethylene, propylene and synthetic rubber units in October 1988. In March 1991 Technip and TPL won the $450m contract for engineering, equipment supply, construction supervision and start-up of three units to produce ethylene derivatives. A $80m contract went in April 1991 to Daelim for the pyrolisis gasoline plant (IFP process) and the benzene extraction unit (Krupp process). In December 1991 Tecnimont got the $450m contract for engineering and construction of various ancillary facilities. In August 1992 Samsung got a $108m contract to build the rubber and latex units. In January 1993, Technip won the $200m job to build the production line for cumene, phenol and acetone.