On April 22, China’s national key foreign-invested project, ExxonMobil Huizhou ethylene project was put into construction in Dayawan Petrochemical Zone in Huizhou, Guangdong province, with a total investment of US$10 billion. This is the second 10-billion-US$ wholly-foreign-owned major petrochemical project in Guangdong after BASF fine chemical integrated project in Donghai Island of Zhanjiang. 

It is the first major petrochemical project wholly invested by a US company in China. The project will be built in two stages. Phase I project will include a 1 600 kt/a ethylene cracker, with bulk commodities covering 1 200 kt/a metallocene polyethylene (PE), 470 kt/a low density PE (LDPE), 420 kt/a polypropylene (PP) impact copolymer and 420 kt/a homopolymer PP. The completion of the first phase project in 2023 will help ease China’s structural supply shortage of polyolefin products and reduce its reliance on imports of high-performance polyolefin products.