Irkutsk Polymer, a wholly owned subsidiary of one of Russia’s largest independent oil and gas producers, has chosen Univation Technologies’ Unipol PE technology for a new plant it is building in Ust-Kut, Irkutsk.

The Siberian company has also selected Univation’s Prodigy bimodal and Acclaim Unimodal HDPE advanced resin product technologies. The former provides capability for producing bimodal products such as PE100 pipe, high-performance films and lightweight blow molding bottles for household, industrial and chemical applications. The latter can produce advanced unimodal products such as PE80 pipe, high environmental stress crack resistance, large blow moulded drums and heavy duty film liners.

“Providing significant, high-quality PE resins to supply both Russian and export markets needs was an important objective for the Irkutsk Polymer Plant, and this new Unipol PE plant creates the world-scale capacity required to achieve that goal,” said  Egor Fomin, director of Irkutsk Polymer Plant.

Japanese contractor Toyo Engineering announced last January that it had won a contract to provide engineering, procurement and technical advisory services for the pre-commissioning and commissioning stages of the PE unit along with the site’s ethylene plant, which will use Lummus technology supplied by McDermott International. Both plants have a capacity of 650,000 t/y – a start-up date has not been disclosed.

Univation will also give Irkutsk access to its Premier APC+ 2.0 advanced process control system and its virtual plant simulation software for staff training purposes.