SK Geo Centric (Seoul, South Korea) will partner with Saudi Arabia’s global chemical company SABIC (Riyadh, Saudi Arabia) for a joint investment related to the the construction and expansion of high-value chemical products plants with specific focus on polyolefin elastomer (POE). SK Geo Centric said that SABIC SK Nexlene Company (SSNC), which is a joint venture established with SABIC, signed an MOU with Ulsan Metropolitan City on Aug. 23rd at the Ulsan Metropolitan City Hall.
Following the MOU between the two, SSNC will invest approximately KRW 200 billion through Korea Nexlene, its South Korean subsidiary, by July 2024, in Ulsan, South Korea, to build and expand the plants for producing the high-performance polyolefin elastomer (POE).
SSNC is a joint venture established last 2015 between SK Geo Centric and SABIC. Korea Nexlene is a wholly-owned subsidiary of SSNC. SSNC has invested a total of KRW 605.1 billion in Korea Nexlene to establish 68,100-m2 size of plant, and it has been annually producing 210,000 tons of Nexlene products. Following the expansion of these plants and construction for more, the capacity is expected to increase by 43%, reaching over 300,000 tons. More than 90% of the production is expected to be exported.
Nexlene is a high-performance product developed by SK Geo Centric in 2010 using ethylene as its raw material. The product, which means “the chemical product for the next generation,” became the first-ever product in Korea to use locally-produced technologies in all of its processes. Compared to ordinary polyethylene products, it is cleaner, more transparent, and more durable. Also, because of its excellent density range, it can easily undergo secondary processing to be made into other products. The decision to additionally construct plants was made to preemptively respond to the rising demands of high-value eco-friendly materials for finished cars and solar panels.
Korea Nexlene is currently producing high-performance products which utilize Nexlene. These include the linear low-density polyethylene (LLDPE), polyolefin plastomers (POP), and polyolefin elastomers (POE). For a long time, Dow Chemical Company and other international petrochemical corporates have been monopolizing the industry. However, Nexlene Korea’s excellent high-performance product development is shattering the monopolistic structure and advancing forward in the market.
POE boasts extreme levels of elasticity and impact resistance, so it is used to strengthen plastic components to make cars lighter. Moreover, since it can reduce power loss compared to other products, it is also used to produce films for solar panels. POP, on the other hand, is used in medical and food packages for its excellent hygiene and sealing capacity. It blocks contact with foreign materials, expanding the quality maintenance period of the products made out of it. Given that these high-performance chemical products (POE and POP) can be used in various fields, their markets are expected to grow by 5% every year.