Indorama Ventures completed the purchase of Cepsa’s purified terephthalic acid plant in Montreal, Canada, this week, improving feedstock security and furthering expansion in the West for the Thailand-based polyethylene terephthalate producer. The sale of the 550,000 mt/year PTA unit had been announced in March and has now completed regulatory approval, Cepsa said Monday. The Montreal PTA plant receives feedstock paraxylene via a pipeline from an adjacent refinery and can ship product via rail or the St. Lawrence River. The production of 1 lb of PET requires 0.87 lb of PTA and 0.34 lb of monoethylene glycol. Feedstock pricing for US PTA has been mostly stable since the May price was set at 47.55 cents/lb ($1,048/mt) on May 21. US spot paraxylene has risen $5/mt to $855/mt FOB USG since the May price was set. The June PTA price has not been settled as the market awaits the settlement of the US PX contract. The US PX contract represents the key variable in the formula-derived US PTA price.
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