Petrochemical Commercial Co.(PCC), the NPC's marketing subsidiary, has formed a joint-venture shipping company with two other Iranian companies.
PCC holds a 25% stake in the company called Proton Shipping Co. (PSC), while two Iranian shipping companies, Iranian Shipping Line and National Iranian Tanker Co. have the remaining 75% stake.
Mohammad Ehtiati, chairman and managing director of PCC has said the move has been taken as part of PCC's strategy to enhance its competitiveness in the global petrochemicals marketplace adding that the establishment of PSC is in line with NPC's recent decision to include shipping among its core businesses.
According to Ehtiati, PCC plans initially to acquire a set of time charter vessels in 2004. It will then expand its fleet to include bigger ocean liners by 2006. Such a strategy, he says, will enable PCC to reduce logistics costs. Ehtiati pointed out that about 20-30% of NPC's product goes to China, close to 25% to other countries in Northeast Asia, and close to 20% to India, all long-haul destinations. Therefore, freight charges constitute an important component of marketing costs.
Such costs could be reduced sharply through the establishment of the shipping joint venture while these cost savings could enhance NPC's competitiveness.




With world and large-scale petrochemical plants under construction at Mahshahr and Assaluyeh, NPC aims to increase the value of its output to $6bn by the end of 2005 of which an estimated $3.7bn is targeted for export.
Mohammad Ehtiati, chairman and managing director of Petrochemical Commercial Co., an NPC subsidiary, told the Japan Chemical Week (JCW) that with the development of gas projects in Assaluyeh, Iran would be able to secure an ethane feed of 12mn tonne/year. He told JCW: "Assaluyeh holds 10% of the world's natural gas reserves and by 2015 production of 10m tonne/year of ethylene will be possible using feedstock from Assaluyeh alone."




Detailed engineering work is underway for building pipelines to transport ethylene from southern areas to the western regions in Iran. NPC President Mohammad Reza Nematzadeh said the detailed engineering work is expected to be completed in the near future following which the project will move to the execution phase.
The pipelines will carry ethylene to five western provinces providing feedstock for construction of plants, which can produce around 1m tonne/year of various polyethylenes. Nematzadeh said the development was expected to bring about the growth of the western provinces especially their downstream petrochemicals. He urged potential investors to contribute to the development of the projects either independently or jointly with NPC.