The Asian ethylene market is preparing for a challenging year. There will be 11 new ethylene crackers are expected to come on line in 2021 — eight in China, two in South Korea and one in southeast Asia.
China will be leading in this expansion with a total capacity of 7.8 mln tonne/year.
This will raise China's effective ethylene capacity to 39.8mn t/yr by the end of this year, a 23% increase from 2020. The expansions come after the start-up of six greenfield ethylene crackers with total ethylene capacity of 6.8mn t/yr in 2020, which took effective ethylene capacity to 32.2mn t/yr by the end of last year, up by 21pc from 2019.
