NPC has issued tender documents for a new ammonia plant at RPC in the Bandar Imam Khomeini petrochemicals special economic zone. The facility is set to have a capacity of 676,500 tonnes a year (t/y). The plant will complement two existing ammonia facilities, which produce 330,000 t/y each.

Tender documents will also be issued soon for the second major fertiliser complex in the Pars special economic/energy zone (ParsEE) near Bandar Assaluyeh. The plant will produce 2,050 tonnes a day (t/d) of ammonia and 3,250 t/d of urea. In May, a team made up of Toyo Engineering Corporationand Chiyoda Corporation, both of Japan, with the local Petrochemical Industries Design & Engineering Company (PIDEC), won a $205 million contract for an identical plant in the same location (MEED 1:6:01).

NPC's board is set to approve more projects at ParsEE later this year, among them the olefins 11 complex, which is under study. The new complex will include an ethane cracker. Other projects to be tendered include a polystyrene plant, a purefied terephthalic acid plant, a dimethyl acetate plant and a gas-to-liquids plant.

NPC owns nine production complexes, each of which is operated by a subsidiary company. In 1999, the company's overall annual production capacity reached 14.2 million tonnes.