South Korean chemical manufacturer Lotte Chemical Titan clarified on Thursday that the new investment of a petrochemical plant worth US$4 billion in Cilegon, Banten, would be carried out by its sister company Lotte Chemical Indonesia.

Lotte Chemical Titan president director Yoon Sungku made the clarification, following media reports that wrongly said that the new project would be run by his company.

“Lotte Chemical Titan engages in the business of trading polyethylene and polypropylene, while our subsidiary Lotte Chemical Titan Nusantara engages in the business of producing and selling polyethylene,” Yoon said.

He stressed that Lotte Chemical Titan and Lotte Chemical Titan Nusantara had nothing to do with activities of the new plant in Cilegon.

However, he added that the new plant would produce ethylene which might fulfill the feedstock requirement of Lotte Chemical Nusantara in producing polyethylene, he said.

“The plant which is being built on 45 hectares of land can produce 1 million tons of ethylene per year,” Yoon said.

He later explained that Lotte Chemical Indonesia was not listed on the Indonesia Stock Exchange (IDX) as the firm’s stocks were mostly owned by its parent company, Malaysia’s Lotte Chemical Titan Group.

According to a statement, Lotte Chemical Indonesia is 99.998 percent owned by Malaysia’s Lotte Chemical Titan and the remaining percentage by Lotte Chemical Singapore, another subsidiary of Malaysia’s Lotte Chemical Titan. (yon/bbn)