TURKEY - Petkim Facilities.

Petkim has plants at Izmir, which has become a major industrial centre in Turkey, and the nearby oil refining complex of Aliaga. The other main complex of Petkim is at Yarimca.

The Aliaga and Yarimca facilities were expanded during the early 1990s.

At Aliaga, the ethylene production capacity has been raised from 350,000 tons per annum to more than 400,000 tons/year, with Stone & Webster having done the work. Mitsui & Co. of Japan and its partner Roche raised the high density polyethylene (HDPE) unit's capacity from 44,000 t/y to 60,000 t/y. At times this unit has operated at more than 70,000 tons/year

Simon Carves has increased the low density polyethylene (LDPE) unit's capacity at Aliaga from 175,000 tons/year to 200,000 tons/year. Solvay/CTIP had expanded the Vinyl chlorine monomer (VCM) production capacity from about 120,000 tons/year to 135,000 tons/year and the PVC production capacity from 105,000 tons/year to more than 130,000 tons/year. Badger worked on the expansion of the CAN unit from 77,000 tons/year to 92,000 tons/year.

In 1999, Krupp Uhde completed an oxychlorination plant at the Aliaga complex under a contract awarded by Petkim in late 1997. The 125,000 tons/year unit produces ethylene dichloride (EDC). EDC is a feedstock used in the manufacture of VCM.

In August 2000 Krupp Uhde won a DM36 million (US$17.3m) contract to upgrade Petkim's VCM plant at Aliaga and expand its capacity to 152,000 tons/year. Petkim has had at Aliaga a new waste-gas collection system and a combustion plant added for valorisation of waste-gases and liquid by-products and their conversion to high-concentration hydrochloric acid.

Petkim has had a new LDPE unit at Aliaga built by Stamicarbon of the Netherlands and Technip of France under US$66 million worth of contracts awarded in mid-November 2000. The unit, completed in 2004, has an installed capacity of 120,000 tons/year. This is to be expanded eventually to more than 360,000 tons/year. (LDPE is used to produce packaging film, bags, shrink film and agricultural film).

At the Yarimca complex, ICI/Solvay has raised the PVC production capacity from 47,000 tons/year to 62,000 tons/year. Polystyrene capacity also has been expanded, by Cosden/Litwin, from 18,000 tons/year to 25,000 tons/year.

The Yarimca complex was one of the victims of the big earthquake which hit north-western Turkey on Aug. 17, 1999. Some of its plants were kept shut for more than three months, because of heavy damage. As a result, limited production deprived activity in the local tyre industry. The tyre industry itself suffered serious damage because of the earthquake.