Huizhou takes major step forward as petrochemical hotspot

Huizhou city in South China's Guangdong province is celebrating a new achievement in constructing a global petrochemical industry hub after China National Offshore Oil Corporation, or CNOOC, and Shell Petrochemicals Company Limited, or CSPC, inaugurated a product innovation center on Wednesday.

Covering construction floor space of over 7,000 square meters, the center is equipped with more than 170 sets of internationally-advanced equipment, said a statement released by Huizhou Daya Bay Economic and Technological Development Zone.

"It marks a crucial step for CNOOC and Shell in deepening technological innovation layout and advancing high-end transformation, builds a full-chain industrial ecosystem covering production, product innovation and sales, and continuously injects strong innovative impetus into the high-end upgrading of Huizhou's petrochemical new materials industry," it said.

Starting with the groundbreaking of Phase I project in 2002, the official commissioning of Phase II in 2018, and now the full-scale construction of Phase III ethylene and polycarbonate projects, CNOOC and Shell, the world-class petrochemical giant, have been operating in Daya Bay for 25 years, demonstrating confidence in the vast Chinese market.

CNOOC and Shell have invested more than 100 billion yuan ($14.1 billion) in Huizhou, giving momentum to the city's establishment of a global petrochemical industry highland and Guangdong's creation of a new growth pole for high-quality development.

CSPC's CEO Ryan Wong said the inauguration of the product innovation center was an inevitable choice for CNOOC and Shell.

After more than 20 years of development, the company has built a scale advantage of 3.8 million metric tons of ethylene capacity, and created nearly 500 upstream and downstream enterprises, he said, adding that it had also laid a solid industrial foundation for the construction of the product innovation center.

Wong spoke highly of the local business environment.

"The government has been fully supporting us as always, including setting up a special task force to speed up approvals, building industry-university-research cooperation bridges to introduce university research resources, improving basic supporting facilities and optimizing the business environment," he said.

The collaborative model of "government providing support and enterprises driving innovation" has created favorable conditions for the project's implementation in Huizhou, he added.

captions: CNOOC and Shell Petrochemicals Company Limited (CSPC) on Wednesday inaugurated a product innovation center in Huizhou , Guangdong province, on Wednesday. photos provided to chinadaily.com.cn