Abu Dhabi Polymers Company (Borouge) has started commissioning the multibillion-dollar, second-phase expansion of its Ruwais plastics complex according to a senior executive at the company.

“We are, as I speak, starting up Borouge 2,” Roy Vardheim, the company’s chief operating officer, said at MEED’s Petrochemicals 2010 conference in Abu Dhabi on 8 June.

When all of the plants being built as part of the expansion have reached full operations rates Borouge will be able to produce a total of 2 million tonnes a year (t/y) of basic plastics at the plant including 800,000 tonnes year of polypropylene and 540,000 t/y of polyethylene; it currently produces 600,000 t/y of polyethylene at the site.

The basic chemicals ethylene and propylene will be produced at a 1.5 million t/y ethane cracker and a 750,000 t/y polyolefins unit.

MEED reported in March that Borouge planned to start commissioning the complex in May, and sources close the scheme confirm that work began in the middle of the month.

The company is starting up the cracker, which it hopes will be fully operational by August, Vardheim said. This will be followed by the polyethylene unit, the polyolefins unit and finally the polypropylene unit. The entire complex is scheduled to be operational before the end of the year.

“We plan to start up the complex by November 2010,” he said, adding that the company had to allow some margin for error.

“It is not [so much] going good, it is going OK,” he said. “As you start up a plant of this size, there will be problems.”

Both the cracker and the polyolefins unit will be one of the biggest in the world, presenting unique technical challenges, he said. “We are also starting one of the biggest experiments in the world; we are starting the world’s biggest polyolefins unit,” Vardheim explained.

This will be further complicated by the company’s plans to start construction of a third expansion, Borouge 3, which will bring the total output at Ruwais to 4.5 million tonnes a year of plastics,  making it one of the largest basic plastics complex in the world.

In May, MEED reported that a consortium of South Korea’s Samsung Engineering and Italy’s Tecnimont were the favourites to win the engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) contracts to build a $1.45bn polyolefins unit and a $500m low-density polyethylene (LDPE) plant while South Korea’s Hyundai Engineering & Construction was the frontrunner for the $937m offsites and utilities deal.

Borouge sent out formal letters of award to the three contractors on 26 May, and site preparation work has already started, Vardheim said. The company already has sales agreements in place for the added capacity, the majority in Asia.