Acrylonitrile (ACN) output has been affected by a fire early this week at Japanese firm Asahi Kasei's Mizushima cracker unit.
The incident resulted into shutdown of its unit and push up ACN prices this week in Asia.
Asahi was scheduled to bring back on stream its two ACN 300 kilo ton per annum units on completion of its maintenance turnaround.
Due to cracker outage and propylene feedstock shortage, two ACN lines remain out of commission pushing up premium on ACN in the region.
This has prompted sellers to revise their offers between US $1460 per metric ton to US $1480 per metric ton CFR levels, said local source in Japan.
Asahi's production loss of about 10 kt coupled with Asian supply position constrain has compounded the situation, he said.
Asahi has asked its term contract buyers to reduce their purchase volumes or defer deliveries to overcome this difficult situation.
Near term ACN scene appears bullish, due to downstream ABS and SAN prices climbing on back of improved demand across Asia with energy prices remaining firm.
marketing@alchempro.com
