By Nina Ying Sun
ASSISTANT MANAGING EDITOR
Published: August 26, 2014 11:46 am ET
Updated: August 26, 2014 11:48 am ET
Image By: Sinopec Corp.
Sinopec Corp. executives at the firm's half-year report.
China’s state-owned petrochemical giant Sinopec Corp. said it is licensing polypropylene polymerization technology to a U.S. plant for the first time in history.
The Beijing-based company said it has recently signed an agreement to license gas-phase PP continuous pre-polymerization technology to Formosa Plastics Corp. USA.
The technology has also been licensed to four customers in China. Sinopec claims the technology features high efficiency, can significantly reduce the usage of hexane and reduced unit operating cost.
In China, Sinopec has just launched a 200,000-ton PP facility in Maoming, Guangdong province, raising the total PP capacity of the Maoming site to 670,000 tons, the company said earlier this month.
The company, which ranked No. 3 in the latest Fortune Global 500 list, also announced its half-year results on Aug. 22, showing a huge loss of its chemical portfolio.
Despite the 31 billion yuan ($5 billion) corporate wide net profit, Sinopec’s chemical business lost 4 billion yuan ($650 million) on 213 billion yuan ($35 billion) of sales in the first six months.
Fierce competition in the domestic market led to significant price reductions on chemical products, causing the loss, the midyear report said. It also cited rising domestic capacity, growing imports and high feedstock price as contributing factors. | 
