Polyolefins producer Borealis (Vienna / Austria; www.borealisgroup.com) is to invest EUR 160m in an improvement programme at its production facility in Stenungsund / Sweden. The work involves the upgrade and revamp of four cracker furnaces to the highest process safety and energy efficiency standards, the company said. The other two, older furnaces at the site will shut down. The Stenungsund upgrade programme is scheduled to begin in late 2016 and be completed by 2020. A company spokeswoman told Plasteurope.com that the current plans do not call for a capacity expansion at the site, which PIE's Polyglobe capacity database (www.polyglobe.net) shows can turn out 625,000 t/y of C2 as well as 230,000 t/y of C3.

Borealis said the Stenungsund cracker offers world-class feedstock flexibility as well as Europe’s largest feedstock storage capacity. In 2014, Borealis announced a multi-million investment in an upgrade of the cracker and the construction of an ethane storage tank for ethane imports from the US and Europe (see also Plasteurope.com of 12.02.2014).