Japan's Maruzen Petrochemical has restarted its 480,000t / year naphtha cracker in Chiba, Japan, nearly a month after it was shut down following the earthquake on 11March.
With the restart of this plant, only two crackers remain shut.
The crackers are operated by Mitsubishi Chemical at Kashima plant and have a total capacity of 828,000t / year.
Mitsubishi Chemical, a unit of Chemical Holdings, said in late March that it would be at least two months before cracker operations resumed.
Japan has a total ethylene production capacity of 7.3 million tons per year, but nearly 17% of that capacity is offline because of the shutdown of two Kashima plants and maintenance shutdown of Idemitsu Kosan Co's 374,000t / year cracker at Chiba.
