Singapore's Aster plans to raise naphtha cracker utilisation, executive says

[SINGAPORE] Singapore’s Aster Chemicals and Energy ran its naphtha-fed cracker at a rate ranging from 75 per cent to 80 per cent in the last five months and plans to ramp up utilisation rates further, a company official said on Thursday (Sep 10).

Aster, a joint venture of Indonesia’s Chandra Asri and trading major Glencore, operates a 1.1 million metric tonne per year steam cracker on Singapore’s Bukom Island.

Aster has a refining hub on Bukom Island, which it took over from Shell in April 2025.

“We will ramp up further and we are starting to supply petrochemicals to our buyers,” Andre Khor, chief financial officer and deputy chief executive officer at Aster, told Reuters on the sidelines of the APPEC conference. REUTERS

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