Hungarian polyolefin and petrochemical group Tiszai Vegyi Kombinat (TVK, Tiszaujváros; www.tvk.hu) said that a combination of efficiency improvements, favourable exchange rates and decreasing energy prices had helped it record its highest half year operating profit since 2007 in H1 2014. At EUR 40.8m, the figure is 102% higher than the first six months of 2013. EBITDA increased by 44% year-on-year to EUR 62.1m. Sales in euros fell by 2% year-on-year to EUR 650m.

First half polymer production volumes increased by 1.4% year-on-year, while polymer sales decreased by 0.3% with inventory volumes 9% lower at the end of the period. Overall capacity utilisation increased by 3 percentage points year-on-year to 83%. This was achieved despite a two week cleaning shutdown at the company’s olefin-1 unit and planned maintenance shutdowns at the HDPE-2 and PP-4 units carried out in the second quarter of 2014.

Looking forward, TVK CEO Zsolt Petho, said: “Market expectations show favourable outlook for the future. We are committed to continue the efficiency improvement process. We believe that, based on our achievements, we can maintain our achieved results. We expect positive operating profit in the next quarter again.”

The company has appointed Artur Thernesz as CEO, effective 1 September 2014. He served with TVK’s parent group MOL (Budapest / Hungary; www.mol.hu) from 2005 to 2012 before becoming executive director for refining and marketing at Croatian refiner and MOL subsidiary INA (Zagreb; www.ina.hr) for the past two years.