Ikelic - Alliance Digital Repository

COAL
projects"
will tend toward high-value chemicals
and specialties such as the hexene, pentene, cer
tain waxes and phenolics already being
produced.
Joint ventures have been used by the firm to
tackle petrochemical overcapacity and to im
prove international competitiveness. The most
significant venture is with AECI (called Polifin)
which combines key monomers and plastics inter-
Excluding its venture with AECI, and its ex
plosives, fertilizer and motor alcohols
businesses, Sasol exports 40 percent by value of
70 percent by volume of its petrochemicals
production.
At home, competition will increase with the
government's agreement to abide by GATT and
phase down production levels over the next
5 years. Domestic tariff rates on chemicals are
expected to drop from 10-25 percent to
10-15 percent.
The successes of the chemical side of the group
are often clouded by the historically rigid govern
ment control over the petroleum industry and the
complex financial formulae used to determine
equity among
country.
the petroleum multinationals in the
The government currently owns only around
12 percent of Sasol stock.
Sasol's current primary
products include diesel,
gasoline, aviation fuel, jet fuel, liquefied
petroleum gas, automotive lubricants and
bitumen. Chemical products consist of ethylene,
propylene, solvents, phenols, noble gases
(argon, krypton and xenon), ammonia, fertilizers,
explosives, anode coke, alpha-olefins,
acrylonitrile (from early 1995), acrylic fibers,
speciality hard waxes, paraffin waxes and normal
paraffins.
Sasol processes and produces synfuels to
supply about 35 percent of South Africa's liquid
fuel requirements.
4-17
With the 1994 commissioning
of its
100,000 tonne per year alpha-olefins facility, the
company has now become the world's largest
single supplier of hexene and pentene.
New facilities at Sasolburg to produce higher
phenols make Sasol a leading supplier in Europe
of o-cresols, and the supply of m-cresol, p-cresol
and xylenols is rising rapidly.
Last winter, Sasol Chemical Industries'
phenolics
division signed a contract with Sumitomo Cor
poration to distribute and market meta- and para-
cresols and xylenol blends to Japan and other
East Asian countries. Sasol is the world's largest
producer of cresols, recovering them from
depitched tar acids obtained in its coal gasifica
tion process. The company
85 percent of its phenolic products.
exports about
Also in 1994, Sasol's fertilizers division entered
the liquid-fertilizers market by acquiring a
50 percent stake in Delmas Fertilizers, an inde
pendent producer based at Delmas, in the East
ern Transvaal Province. The agreement includes
a new liquid-fertilizers plant at Secunda, with
production expected to start September 1994.
According to Sasol, all raw materials, particularly
liquid ammonium nitrate, are available at its coal
gasification complexes in Secunda and Sasol
burg.
Sasol's first shipments of coal-based alpha-
olefins arrived in Europe in October. Sasol's
declared plan is to export 50,000 tonnes per year
each of hexene-1 and pentene-1 to the world
market, which is 90 percent of the new plant's
capacity.
Sasol's biggest potential chemical outlet is in
alpha-olefins, said to be 1.2 million tons of poten
tial output, in comparison to the 100,000 tons
now recovered. Sasol technology to recover
alpha-olefins up to C_ is fully developed, with
purities exceeding international standards.
However, while progress has been made on the
more lucrative Ce to C cuts, the purity is not up
to world levels yet.
THE SYNTHETIC FUELS REPORT, JANUARY 1995