Chandra Asri revamping

Chandra Asri revamping

TOKYO (Dow Jones): Japan's Marubeni Corp. plans to complete
the revamp of Indonesia's PT Chandra Asri Merak Petrochemical
Center by end-2000, despite political and financial uncertainty
in the country, an official with the trading house told Dow Jones
Newswires yesterday.

Marubeni owns a 21.2 percent stake in Chandra Asri, which is
led by Indonesia's former president Soeharto's middle son Bambang
Trihatmodjo.

Chandra Asri was originally planned to increase ethylene
production capacity by 165,000 metric tons a year from the
current 510,000 tons/year in the autumn of 1998. However, this
was rescheduled to 1999, and again delayed to the end of 2000,
the official said.

"In order to meet growing ethylene requirement in the country
and to cut running costs at the complex, we plan to start
revamping construction at Chandra Asri in the middle of next
year, so that the expansion will be completed by the end of
2000," the Marubeni official added.

With steady recovery in domestic ethylene and propylene demand
for petrochemical feedstock, the Chandra Asri Merak complex is
operating at about 90 percent of capacity as of the middle of
July, the company official noted.