The Italian subsidiary of multinational conglomerate Honeywell has reached an agreement to help upgrade monitoring and control technology in Iran's Tabriz Petrochemical Company, the company's chief executive officer said.
"Based on the agreement, Honeywell will upgrade TPC's monitoring and control system for its olefin and expandable polystyrene production units," Siavash Derafshi was also quoted as saying by NIPNA, the National Petrochemical Company's news portal on Sunday.
"The collaboration is aimed at replacing TPC's outdated distributed control and emergency shutdown systems with new technology" by Honeywell, the official said.
The modernization program is an effort to streamline manufacturing processes for olefin, the building block for wallpapers, carpeting, ropes and vehicle interiors, and EPS, or expandable polystyrene.
EPS is a lightweight and rigid thermoplastic product with many applications like thermal insulation in buildings, packaging, cushioning of valuable goods and food packaging.
According to the report, Honeywell's technology will also help TPC improve the treatment of wastewater in the complex and reduce its environmental footprint.
Honeywell provides technology to petroleum refining, gas processing, petrochemical production and major manufacturing industries, among other services and products across wide-ranging industries such as aerospace, home and building technologies and safety and productivity solutions.
Located in East Azarbaijan Province in northwest Iran, TPC's petrochemical products include raw polymers, polyethylene, polystyrene and various grades of a thermoplastic polymer known as acrylonitrile butadiene styrene, or ABS.
The lifting of international sanctions last year breathed new life into TPC.
The company boosted exports in 2016 by 67% from the previous year, as the removal of financial and trade barriers helped TPC expand supplies to Europe, Turkey and countries in the CIS region, a TPC statement announced in January.
According to reports, the petrochemical producer is estimated to cut an estimated $30 million in annual costs by reducing energy consumption and sulfur emissions.
According to the Oil Ministry, western and Asian companies are engaged in talks over $10 billion worth of petrochemical ventures in Iran.
Oil- and gas-rich Iran is looking to secure an array of foreign investments to push petrochemical output capacity from 60 million tons to more than double that amount by 2022, the last year of the Sixth Five-Year Economic Development Plan, and raise its stake in the regional market to over 40% from less than a quarter now.
Tehran says its new petrochemical ventures require over $70 billion in investments that should mostly come from foreign sources.
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