Polyester fibre: Ibrahim Fibre to invest $250 million

Pakistan's Ibrahim Fibre will have a new 230,000-235,000 tons per year polyester staple plant in Pakistan by 2012, a senior company executive said on Thursday, according to ICIS news.

Construction of the $250m plant – the company's third polyester staple unit – is under way, with machinery imported from Germany expected to arrive starting June, said Shahid Amin, Director of Pakistan-based Ibrahim Fibre, on the sidelines of the Asia Petrochemical Industry Conference (APIC) 2011 in Fukuoka.

The company already operates 70,000 ton-per-year and a 140,000 ton-per-year polyester fibre plants in Pakistan, and sells its entire production to the domestic market, where demand is high, Amin told ICIS in an interview. German technology provider Lurgi will build and start up the plant by last quarter of 2012, he added.

Most of feedstocks – purified terephthalic acid (PTA) and monoethylene glycol (MEG) – will be sourced from Ibrahim Fibre's existing suppliers within and outside of Pakistan. The company is also planning to venture in upstream projects, like a PTA plant, given a growing demand in Pakistan for petrochemicals, Amin said.

With domestic cotton production only averaging 11 million-13 million bales annually, the gap is usually filled up with polyester yarn and viscose, mostly imported from China and Indonesia, Amin said.

Even if Pakistan's per capita consumption of polyester fibre does not rise dramatically, its growing population of 180 million people ensures strong demand, he said. "That is why we are [building] another plant," he added.