Chungcheongnam-do

The Daesan Petrochemical Complex in Seosan, Chungnam Provincehas been preparing itself to be a world-class petrochemical complex.
Covering 2.50 million pyeong in Daesan-eup, Seosan City, Chungnam Province, the complex is one of the major industrial complexes of Korea with a high concentration of large-scale oil refineries and petrochemical plants including Samsung Total, Hyundai Oil Bank, LG Chemicals, and Lotte Daesan Petrochemical Corp. Now it’s ready to emerge as a mecca of Korea’s petrochemical industry on the back of large foreign investment.

Daesan Petrochemical Complex in Seosan has many geographical advantages.
It was in the late 1980s that Daesan started to be developed in full-scale with the introduction of Geukdong Oil Refinery (currently Hyundai Oil Bank), which was joined by Samsung General Chemicals (currently Samsung Total), LG Chemicals in the Daesan plant, and Lotte Daesan Petrochemical Corp. in the middle 1990s and thus grew to be a petrochemical complex. One of the major attractions of Daesan to these petrochemical corporations is its geography. With the 50-meter-deep shore, it can hold large ships. Only 400 km from China in a straight line, it is able to serve as an advance base for the companies. In a word, these petrochemical corporations were attracted to its natural conditions.

Crisis and revival
There was once a time when Daesan was deemed as a failure. Others would even label it as “the culprit of excessive supply” and “the very cause of the foreign currency crisis.” Things, however, started to turn in early 2000 when China began to import all types of raw materials including petrochemical products, thus bringing the plants in Daesan to full-scale operation. In the face of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games the Chinese market keeps on expanding, which has led to the new plants and plant expansions in the area.
Hyundai Oil Bank recorded sales of 9.5 trillion won including the exports of 3.12 trillion won; Samsung Total recorded sales of 3.3 trillion won (2.12 trillion of exports); Lotte Daesan Petrochemical Corp. 1.86 trillion won (780 billion won of exports); and LG Chemicals in Daesan 1.87 trillion won (720 billion won of exports). All of the tenant corporations in Daesan have accelerated in growth rates as well.

Attracting foreign investment, building new plants and expanding others
Hyundai Oil Bank is planning to set up a heavy oil upgrading facility to produce high value-added gasoline out of bunker C oil by investing 2.2 billion dollars by 2011 and to bulk up the aromatic product production facility from its current 400,000 tons to 1.50 million tons by investing one billion dollars. Recently it successfully attracted foreign investments by signing an investment MOU worth 1.1 billion dollars with CEPSA of Spain. These days it’s working on attracting investment funds from the oil money of Arab countries.
Samsung Total’s investment plan includes an investment of 550 million dollars to increase the production of its four major products, namely the naphtha cracking center (NCC), styrene monomer (SM), para-xylene (P-X), polyethylene (PE) and polypropylene (PP), to one million tons.
Invested by the Honam Petrochemical Corp. and Mitsubishi Rayon of Japan, Daesan MMA Co., Ltd. has recently obtained approval from a foreign investment company and has decided to invest 200 million dollars to build a new plant. Both LG Chemicals in Daesan and Lotte Daesan Petrochemical Corp. are currently working on the plant expansion plans.
All in all, the Daesan Petrochemical Complex is in full operation around the clock.