Engro Polymer & Chemical Limited ( ) is a Pakistani

polymer A polymer () is a chemical substance, substance or material that consists of very large molecules, or macromolecules, that are constituted by many repeat unit, repeating subunits derived from one or more species of monomers. Due to their br ...

manufacturing company based in

Karachi Karachi is the capital city of the Administrative units of Pakistan, province of Sindh, Pakistan. It is the List of cities in Pakistan by population, largest city in Pakistan and 12th List of largest cities, largest in the world, with a popul ...

, Pakistan. It is a subsidiary of

Engro Corporation Engro Corporation Limited, formerly Engro Chemicals Pakistan Limited, and commonly known as Engro ( ), is a Pakistani conglomerate (company), conglomerate headquartered in Karachi. It was founded as Esso Fertilizer in 1965 by Esso. Its subsidiar ...

with a local market share of more than 70%.

History

Engro Polymer & Chemicals was founded in 1997 as part of Engro Chemical Pakistan. In November 1997, the company entered into a

joint venture A joint venture (JV) is a business entity created by two or more parties, generally characterized by shared ownership, shared returns and risks, and shared governance. Companies typically pursue joint ventures for one of four reasons: to acce ...

agreement with

Mitsubishi Corporation is a Japanese general trading company ( ''sogo shosha'') and a core member of the Mitsubishi Group. For much of the post-war period, Mitsubishi Corporation has been the largest of the five great ''sogo shosha'' (Mitsubishi, Mitsui, Itochu, S ...

and

Asahi Glass Company , formerly Asahi Glass Co., Ltd.'(旭硝子株式会社), is a Japanese global glass manufacturing company, headquartered in Tokyo. It is the largest glass company in the world and one of the core Mitsubishi companies. The company is listed on ...

to build a

polyvinyl chloride Polyvinyl chloride (alternatively: poly(vinyl chloride), colloquial: vinyl or polyvinyl; abbreviated: PVC) is the world's third-most widely produced synthetic polymer of plastic (after polyethylene and polypropylene). About 40 million tons of ...

(PVC) manufacturing plant. The $80 million project was financed with $37 million in equity and $39 million in long-term debt. Engro contributed 50 percent of the equity ($18.5 million), Asahi 30 percent ($11.1 million), and Mitsubishi 20 percent ($7.4 million). Foreign currency debt of $28.5 million came from the

International Finance Corporation The International Finance Corporation (IFC) is an international financial institution headquartered in Washington, D.C. and a member of the World Bank Group that offers investment, advisory, and asset-management services to encourage private ...

and

CDC The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is the national public health agency of the United States. It is a United States federal agency under the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), and is headquartered in Atlanta, ...

, while local currency debt of $10.5 million and working capital of $4 million were provided by various Pakistani and international banks. The facility was constructed at

Port Qasim The Port Muhammad Bin Qasim ( ''Bandar-gāh Muhammad bin Qāsim''), or Qasim Port Authority (), also known as Port Qasim, is a deep-water seaport in Karachi, Sindh, Pakistan, on the coastline of the Arabian Sea under the administrative control ...

, in close proximity to the city of

. The plant was engineered to produce 100,000 tonnes of suspension grade PVC resin per year. The production of PVC at the facility began in 1999. In 2006, Engro Polymer commissioned a chlor vinyl complex, allowing for in-house production of intermediaries such as

vinyl chloride monomer Vinyl chloride is an organochloride with the formula H2C =CHCl. It is also called vinyl chloride monomer (VCM) or chloroethene. It is an important industrial chemical chiefly used to produce the polymer polyvinyl chloride (PVC). Vinyl chloride is a ...

with a capacity of 204,000 tpa and

chlorine Chlorine is a chemical element; it has Symbol (chemistry), symbol Cl and atomic number 17. The second-lightest of the halogens, it appears between fluorine and bromine in the periodic table and its properties are mostly intermediate between ...

with a capacity of 94,200 tpa. The expansion project cost approximately $250 million, which included $30 million loan and $20 million equity investment from the

. It increased its PVC production capacity to 150,000 tons. In the same year, the company was renamed to Engro Polymer & Chemicals Limited after Engro Corporation acquired Asahi Glass stake. Since 2008, Engro Polymer is listed on the

Karachi Stock Exchange The Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX), founded as Karachi Stock Exchange (KSE), is a stock exchange based in Karachi, Pakistan. PSX was classified by MSCI as a Frontier markets, frontier market on 8 September 2021. Pakistan Stock Exchange was fou ...

, following an

initial public offering An initial public offering (IPO) or stock launch is a public offering in which shares of a company are sold to institutional investors and usually also to retail (individual) investors. An IPO is typically underwritten by one or more investm ...

at a strike price of PKR 18. In August 2018, Engro Polymer announced that the company would set up a new plant to expand the production of PVC and

caustic soda Sodium hydroxide, also known as lye and caustic soda, is an inorganic compound with the formula . It is a white solid ionic compound consisting of sodium cations and hydroxide anions . Sodium hydroxide is a highly corrosive base and alkali t ...

. Along with an efficiency project such as de-super heating quenches at EDC/VCM plant.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Engro Polymer and Chemical Engro Manufacturing companies based in Karachi Companies listed on the Pakistan Stock Exchange Companies in the KSE 100 Index Chemical companies established in 1997 Pakistani companies established in 1997 Chemical companies of Pakistan 2008 initial public offerings