Chlorine production climbs to new high
European chlorine production reached 10.61 million tonnes in 2007, which saw also robust demand for chlorine's essential co-product, caustic soda. Chlorine production last year was 2.9% higher than 2006 (10.31 million tonnes) and marked the fourth successive year of strong and steady demand.
Commented Euro Chlor Executive Director Alistair J Steel: "The chlor-alkali sector's strong performance is further confirmation of the importance of these basic chemical building blocks for a vast number of products and processes."
In December 2007, European chlorine production totalled 905,130 tonnes, an increase of 2.0% on the same month in 2006 (887,195 tonnes). In terms of average daily production, December output was level (-0.1%) with the previous month (December 2007: 29,198 tonnes; November 2007: 29,216 tonnes).
For the fourth quarter of 2007, chlorine production totalled 2,678,070 tonnes, a rise of 2.6% compared with the 2006 fourth quarter (2,610,063 tonnes).
With December being a short working month across most of Europe, caustic soda stocks at month end showed their usual seasonal rise, ending at 299,778 tonnes. This was 12.0% above the November 2007 figure (267,598 tonnes) and16% above December 2006 (257,701 tonnes) when the industry was still recovering from a second half ethylene supply shortfall caused by cracker outages.
Capacity utilisation rates in 2007 averaged 85%, compared with the 2006 figure of 83%. In the fourth quarter, average monthly capacity utilisation was 86%, against 84% for the ethylene-impacted 2006 fourth quarter.
Germany remained Europe's largest chlorine producer in 2007, accounting for 43.3% of European production, followed by Belgium/The Netherlands with 14.5%, the UK/Austria/Switzerland/Finland/Sweden/Norway with 12.5%, and France with 11.5%.
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