Site

The Thai Polyethylene (TPE) manufacturing facility, designated TPE Rayong, is located within the Map Ta Phut Industrial Estate, Mueang District, Rayong Province, on Thailand's Eastern Seaboard. The site forms part of the broader SCG Chemicals integrated polyolefins complex at Map Ta Phut, operating in close proximity to the group's upstream cracking units and sister plants, including the Thai Polypropylene (TPP) facility.

Established in 1983, TPE Rayong is one of the oldest polyolefins production sites within the SCGC group and was the first polyethylene facility to operate in Thailand under the Siam Cement umbrella. The site produces a diversified portfolio of PE grades — HDPE, LDPE, LLDPE, and MDPE — as well as ethylene vinyl acetate (EVA) and polyethylene wax, the latter of which made TPE the first polyethylene wax producer in Southeast Asia.

A major technical milestone for the facility was reached in November 2013, when ExxonMobil Chemical Technology Licensing agreed to license its proprietary tubular tail technology to TPE to debottleneck and retrofit the existing autoclave reactor at the LDPE plant. This was a landmark installation — the first-ever application of ExxonMobil's tubular tail technology on an ICI-designed autoclave reactor — and it expanded LDPE production capacity from 100 KTA to 152 KTA while reducing energy consumption by up to 20%. Engineering and design work followed the 2013 agreement, with construction completed in December 2016.

Looking ahead, the TPE Rayong site has been designated as the location for a planned bio-based polyethylene (bio-PE) facility, developed jointly by SCGC and Brazil's Braskem under a joint venture agreement signed in August 2023. The plant is designed to produce up to 200,000 tonnes per year of bio-based PE from sugarcane-derived bio-ethylene, targeting production start-up around 2025–2026 and positioning the site at the forefront of SCGC's green polymer strategy.