OREANDA-NEWS. April 27, 2012. China intends to increase its annual capacity of polyethylene terephthalate (PET) to about 6.6 million tons from 4.7 million tonnes per year in H1 2012. New units producing PET are predicted to go on stream in April-May.

Some Chinese companies plan to start new PET lines. China Resource Chemicals (Huarun) will add three new lines with a combined capacity of 900,000 tpa this year. Two of these lines are being built at the company’s existing plant in Changzhou and the other line is being built as part of a new plant in Zhuhai, China.

Each of the new lines will be able to produce 300,000 tpa of PET. The new plant in Zhuhai and one of the new lines in Changzhou were scheduled to start production by mid-April, while the second new line in Changzhou is expected to start production in early May. The company will become the largest PET producer inside China once these new capacities are installed, with the company’s annual production capacity set to reach 1.3 mln tons.