The US petrochemical giant Dow Chemical, part of the DowDupont structure, suffered a prophylaxis at a cracker in Boehlen, Germany, in 2019 due to an unplanned shutdown in January, ICIS told a source in the company.

Initially, it was planned that maintenance at this enterprise, which can produce 610,000 tons of ethylene, 310,000 tons of propylene and 105,000 tons of butadiene per year, will be launched in March and completed in April of this year.

Earlier it was noted that Dow from January 6 to 26 of this year closed the cracker in Bolen due to a technological malfunction associated with the supply of raw materials.

Ethylene and propylene are the main raw materials for the production of polyethylene (PE) and polypropylene (PP), respectively.

According to the DataScope of the company MRC, the total volume of external PE supplies to the Russian market grew by 12% as compared to the level of 2016 and amounted to 603.8 thousand tons. Supplies of polyethylene of low pressure (HDPE) and ethylene-vinyl acetate (EVA) have significantly increased. The import of PP to Russia grew by 2% in 2017 as compared to 2016 and amounted to 171.2 thousand tons. The supplies of exclusively copolymers of propylene have grown.

DowDuPont Inc. – an American company formed after the merger of Dow Chemical and DuPont on August 31, 2017. The market capitalization of the new company DowDuPont Inc was about USD150 billion, which makes it the leading player in the world market of petrochemical products. Within 18 months the company will be divided into three publicly traded companies: agriculture, materials science and specialized products. The board of directors was headed by Andrew Liveris, and Edward Breen became the general director of the new company. The merger was valued at USD130 billion.