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Indorama’s investments continue to gain momentum
Indorama Ventures, the world’s largest integrated polyester chain manufacturer, revealed it has no plans to slow down its acquisitions or investments in green-field projects even though it is likely to exceed its production capacity in three years.
The company embarked on its ambitious growth plan in 2010, to invest $3.8 billion on mergers and acquisitions and green-field projects to raise production capacity of PTA, PET and polyester to 10 million tonnes by 2014. So far it has spent $1.5 billion and achieved a capacity of 6.5 million tonnes from its wholly-owned companies and joint ventures and it is confident that it can achieve the overall target by 2014, said Aloke Lohia, IVL CEO, at the company’s annual conference last week.
The company’s operations in India will go online by 2014 with annual capacity of PTA of 1.2 million tonnes, PET of 500,000 tonnes and polyester of 800,000 tonnes.
The Middle East is the next destination for IVL’s polyester chain plants. The plant is under consideration in a Middle Eastern country to produce PTA and PET with the same capacity and investment as the Indian facilities. The company expects to finalise the project by the middle of this year.
“We expect to have 7.5 million tonnes by the end of this year. If we can have manufacturing in the Middle East in addition to the certain capacity in India, we’re likely to have more than 11 million tonnes by 2014,” said Mr Lohia.
The company is looking for new opportunities in markets where the demand for PET and polyester for garments and water bottles is growing. It aims to expand both upstream and downstream in the polyester chain. The company’s strategy is to acquire assets in speciality markets for downstream petrochemicals and invest in green-field projects for upstream markets (for PTA and PET products) to ensure enough supply for the downstream businesses.
IVL said it expects revenue to climb to $8 billion this year from approximately $6 billion last year.
The company also revealed it wants to diversify into biochemicals, which may be the next phase of its investment after 2014. Mr Lohia said talks between IVL and Netherlands-based Purac to develop a polylactic acid plant in Thailand with capacity of 10,000 tonnes per year are at an advanced stage.
