Petrochemical plant helps to make Zhanjiang a key player

Facility that cost 44 b yuan to lay an outline of heavy industry in coastal and port areas

A giant petrochemical project has added a new engine for Zhanjiang, a port city in the western part of Guangdong province, to realize its goal of developing itself into a key subcenter of the province.

The Zhongke (Guangdong) Refinery and Petrochemical project, which began operating on June 16, will be able to refine more than 10 million metric tons of crude oil and produce more than 800,000 tons of high-end ethylene products annually, according to Ma Xingrui, governor of Guangdong province.

He deemed it a major petrochemical project that will help China optimize the layout and development of its heavy petrochemical industry in coastal and port areas. He also said it is a significant project for Guangdong province and will promote the high-quality development of its manufacturing industry in the years to come.

The project involves a total investment of more than 44 billion yuan ($6.29 billion) and is expected to realize an annual industrial output value of more than 60 billion yuan. It is also expected to generate profits and taxes at a value of more than 26 billion yuan a year.

Wu Xiwei, executive director and Party secretary of Zhongke Refinery and Petrochemical, said construction on the project will not harm the local environment.

"We adhered to the concept of environmentally friendly development in building the project, as a good environment means better quality of life for the local people," Wu said.

Investment in environmental protection and related facilities for the project has reached 3.69 billion yuan. It aims to make the project a role model for energy conservation, emission reduction and clean production in Zhanjiang, according to Wu.

Zheng Renhao, Party secretary of Zhanjiang, said both the Guangdong provincial government and Zhanjiang city government attach great importance to the project.

"The provincial authorities are urging Zhanjiang to grow into a subcenter of Guangdong province and to speed up the development of a major growth pole of a modern coastal economic belt of the province," Zheng said. He noted the project will help city development gain speed.

The Zhongke project, together with the BASF smart Verbund petrochemical project, will play an important role in the city's development of heavy petrochemical, port-based and foreign-oriented industries. It will also help the city become one of the major petrochemical production bases around the world in the coming years.

The $10 billion BASF project that began the construction of its first plants in November 2019 is China's first large petrochemical project solely owned by foreign investors.

The first plants of the project will produce engineering plastics and thermoplastic polyurethane to serve the increasing needs of various industries in southern China and throughout Asia.

The project in Zhanjiang is BASF's largest overseas investment project.

A large investment project by Baosteel in Zhanjiang, which became operational in 2015, is also a major driver of the city's development of a port-based economy.

The three mammoth projects, all located on the city's Donghai Island, involve total capital inputs of over 200 billion yuan and are conveniently positioned to use the local advantages of a circular economy.

Zhanjiang, which borders the Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region in the west and faces Hainan province in the south, is now one of the major cities on the Chinese mainland for advancing cooperation and trade ties between China and Southeast Asian nations. The city, with a population of 8.5 million, is becoming increasingly important and economically dynamic in west Guangdong.

Zhanjiang has now become a new transport hub in Guangdong province, following Guangzhou and Shenzhen in the Pearl River Delta region. This is because it is linked to other cities in the country and the rest of the world by advanced expressway and high-speed railway networks, a deepwater port and an international airport.

Zhanjiang, on the west coast of Guangdong, is home to a number of major heavy-industry projects and is aiming to become a subcenter in the province. LANG SHUCHEN/FOR CHINA DAILY

The Zhongke (Guangdong) Refinery and Petrochemical project becomes operational on June 16. ZHANG FENGFENG/FOR CHINA DAILY