Tokyo (Platts)--25Nov2010/448 am EST/948 GMT
Japan's Sumitomo Chemical plans to build a 40,000 mt/year solution styrene-butadiene-rubber plant in Singapore that will start commercial operations in the fourth quarter of 2013, the company said in a statement Thursday. The plant, to be built on Jurong Island, will cost Yen 10 billion ($120 million), the company said, adding that demand for S-SBR is bullish as a feedstock for energy-efficient synthetic tires. The company was considering building the plant in either Chiba, Japan, or Singapore, but eventually picked Singapore as butadiene supplies on the island state were seen to be more stable than Chiba, company president Hiroshi Hirose said at a news conference Thursday. The Petrochemical Corporation of Singapore has a 60,000 mt/year butadiene plant on Jurong island. PCS is owned by Sumitomo Chemical (50%) and Shell (50%). --Fumiko Dobashi, fumiko_dobashi@platts.comSimilar stories appear in Platts Asian Petrochemical Scan. See more information at http://www.platts.com/Products/asianpetrochemicalscan