Mexican petrochemicals producer Alpek (Mexico City; www.alpek.com) has pulled out of a proposed JV project to build PTA and PET plants in Russia with Russia’s United Petrochemical Co (UPC). The project, which was announced in 2013, would have been located in Ufa, Bashkortostan – see Plasteurope.com of 09.10.2013. “After an exhaustive evaluation process, we believe it was in our shareholders’ best interest not to pursue this endeavour, and exercised our exit option as laid out in the JV agreement,” Alpek said in its Q4 2014 financial results statement. As a result of this decision, Alpek reported a USD 9m (EUR 8.2m) asset impairment charge in Q4.

UPC is a vertically integrated petrochemicals producer owned by Russian oil company Bashneft (Moscow; www.bashneft.com). Bashneft was previously owned by Russian conglomerate Sistema but was taken back into state ownership in December 2014 in connection with an investigation into Sistema’s purchase of the oil company.