Argentina, Peru Receiving Iranian Petrochem Cargoes

EghtesadOnline: The Persian Gulf Petrochemical Industries Company has recently started shipping petrochemical and polymer products to South American markets, namely Peru and Argentina, a company official said.

News ID: ۷۷۹۵۹۴

07 October 2017

“Some petrochemicals were exported in the current fiscal year [started March 20] to South America under single-shipment contracts,” Hossein Rasoulzadeh was also quoted as saying by NIPNA, the official news agency of NPC, on Wednesday.

PGPIC is Iran’s largest petrochemical company with over 60 subsidiaries, owning more than 11% of Iran’s capital market. Its exports are estimated at $8-9 billion per year, Financial Tribune reported.

According to published reports, PGPIC is the second biggest petrochemical exporter in the Middle East.

On the long distance between Asia and the Americas, and the economic feasibility of shipments, Rasoulzadeh pointed to relatively lower shipping costs without providing details, but mentioned transit time as an issue.

Calculations show that it could take about a month for a cargo ship to sail from the Middle East to a port in Argentina.

The lifting of international economic sanctions in the beginning of last year has allowed Iran to explore new markets for its petrochemicals and reach out to new destinations that were previously inaccessible to Iranian ships.

Majid Rezaei, managing director of TOPCO—a supplier of petrochemicals based in Kish Free Zone south of Iran, said last week that the company had started exporting petrochemicals to New Zealand, expanding the outreach of Iranian petrochemical shipments to the Oceania. According to Rezaei, TOPCO sends a petrochemical and polymer consignment to the Oceanic state monthly. Up to 90% of Iranian petrochemical exports used to go to China, he added, but that amount has declined to 50-60% now, as Iran has ramped up petrochemical sales to Europe and Asia along with new markets like the Oceania.

NPC said in a report in mid-September that Iranian petrochemical production in the first five months of the current fiscal year (March 21-Aug. 22) reached 22.6 million tons, which amounts to $4.6 billion in export revenues.