OREANDA-NEWS.  China's Zhongjin Petrochemical will maintain production at its 2mn t/yr Ningbo paraxylene (PX) plant despite scheduled 10-day maintenance at an upstream hydrocracker starting this weekend.

The company has built stocks of heavy naphtha and mixed xylenes (MX) ahead of the hydrocracker shutdown and will be able to maintain PX production at about 90pc of capacity.

Zhongjin's Ningbo aromatics plant can also produce up to 500,000 t/yr of benzene. It relies mainly on straight-run fuel oil supplemented by heavy naphtha for aromatics production.

The facility, which started in August, contains a reforming unit, fluid catalytic cracker and hydrocracker.

Zhongjin is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Rongsheng Petrochemical, which in turn owns a 50pc stake in major purified terephthalic acid (PTA) producer Yisheng Petrochemical.