JG plans $500-$600M petrochem expansion

GOKONGWEI-led JG Summit Holdings Inc. plans to invest $500 million to $600 million to expand its petrochemical business in the next three years, aiming to serve domestic as well as overseas markets.

JG Summit president Lance Gokongwei told reporters after JG Summit’s stockholders meeting late Thursday that after investing around $1 billion to develop a petrochemical business in the country, the group was ready to expand capacity in its current site in Batangas.

From a current capacity of 320,000 tons of ethylene a year, JG Summit plans to expand capacity to about half a million tons by 2019. This will also include the building of downstream capacity – the production of butadiene and aromatics.

Butadiene is an industrial chemical used in the production of synthetic rubber while aromatic compounds (including benzene, toluene and xylene isomers) are widely used by the chemical and energy industries.

Currently, the Philippines imports both of these products. “So we’ll be able to reduce the import dependency of the Philippines,” Gokongwei said, adding this project could be completed by 2019.

“This year is the planning stage but the heavy spending will start by 2017 and 2018 because you have to prepare groundwork and secure all the permits,” he said.