It will produce 73,000 tons of polybutadiene rubber (PBR) and 20,000 tons of latex a year, Oil Ministry news agency Shana reported.
Output will be used in downstream industries for producing rubber goods, especially tires. With the ability to manufacture polymers, local companies will have no need to import this important product, Financial Tribune reported.
“This is one of the first petrochemical projects in the country fully undertaken by domestic engineers and knowledge-based companies,” Behzad Mohammadi, managing director of National Petrochemical Company, said.
The first phase of the complex opened in 2014 with annual production capacity of 53,000 tons. Initially the plant’s output included PBR and synthetic rubber (SBR). It was Iran's first indigenous petrochemical plant.
Besides supplying domestic companies, Takht-e-Jamshid Petrochemical Plant exports to China, Pakistan, India, Turkey, Malaysia, Thailand, Taiwan, Vietnam, Singapore, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Romania, Greece, Italy, Spain, and Brazil.
The plant’s feedstock includes butadiene and styrene monomers, which are supplied from Amir Kabir Petrochemical Company by pipeline and Pars Petrochemical Company by trucks.
Two Projects by March
“Close to $2 billion worth of petrochemical projects will come online by the end of the current fiscal (March 19),” Mohammadi said.
In the next three months, two petrochemical companies in southern Bushehr Province will be inaugurated, he added. These include Kaveh Methanol Complex and the methanol unit of Bushehr Petrochemical Complex.
Located near the port city of Bandar Dayyer off the Persian Gulf and 120 km west of Assalouyeh, Kaveh Complex is the largest of its kind in Iran and one of the biggest in the world with an annual methanol output of 2.3 million tons.
The privately-owned Kaveh Glass Industry Group, which accounts for 60% of Iran’s glass production, is the main shareholder of the methanol company that will produce methanol, ammonia, urea and polymers.
Bushehr Petrochemical Company is located in Pars Special Economic Energy Zone and its first phase will produce 1.65 million tons of methanol per annum.
When fully operational, it will also produce 1 million tons of olefins, 550,000 tons of ethylene glycol, 300,000 tons of light and heavy polymers and 300,000 tons of acetic acid.
Feedstock of the plant is sour gas from the giant South Pars Gas Field, amounting to 9 million cubic meters of natural gas per day.
Iran’s installed petrochemical output capacity is 66 million tons a year. According to NPC reports, policies to complete the petrochemical value-added chain have helped increase output capacity from 40 million tons in 2013 to 66 million now.
NPC has said it hopes to lift annual output to 130 million tons by 2025.