Initially announced in 2010, the deep-sea terminal for the landing of ethylene at its Belgian production site in Zwijndrecht near the Antwerp harbour – see Plasteurope.com of 28.07.2010 – has been commissioned by Swiss chemicals major Ineos (Rolle; www.ineos.com). Flanders minister president, Kris Peeters, was on hand to help with the opening of the facility, which comes one year later than had been originally scheduled.

With the terminal now fully operational, up to 1m t/y of ethylene can be fed into the grid of the northwest European ARG pipeline system. The world's largest ethylene transport vessels can now be unloaded from here, boasted Ineos. The availability of the new terminal offers the Swiss company the opportunity to import competitively priced ethylene from around the world, thus improving its flexibility. Through the pipeline, Ineos will now be able to supply and efficiently balance its requirements across many of its main European facilities.

Earlier in the year, Ineos signed a long-term shipping agreement to transport ethane from inexpensive shale gas reserves in the US to Europe, to be directly fed into its crackers in Norway and Scotland – see Plasteurope.com of 25.01.2013.

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Time-lapse documentation of the deep sea terminal construction on YouTube