Borouge International Raises 2030 Capacity Target to 13.8 Million Tonnes

The company, which is backed by ADNOC's international investment arm XRG and Austria's OMV, said most of the extra volume will come from expanding ethane cracking capacity in Abu Dhabi. It operates 30 manufacturing sites worldwide.

Cracker Work With Linde

Borouge International said it is completing engineering, procurement and construction contracts for an expansion of its second ethane cracker. The National reported that the work would add 230,000 tonnes of production a year. WAM's Arabic report, issued from Vienna, uses the same 230,000-tonne figure but describes it as the cracker's planned capacity after the expansion.

Germany's Linde Engineering, which licensed the technology for the existing second cracker, started front-end engineering design for the expansion in 2026. The company has also hired Linde for the pre-FEED stage of an expansion at its third cracker. WAM said the extra ethylene from the third unit is planned to be sold. All three of the company's ethane crackers are in Abu Dhabi. Ethane crackers turn ethane into ethylene, the main building block for polyethylene and many other plastics.

The company also said the Borouge 4 expansion at Ruwais is progressing. Once fully operational it will add 1.4 million tonnes of polyethylene capacity, and the company says that will make Ruwais the world's largest single-site polyolefin complex.

European Projects

In Belgium, Borouge International's second propane dehydrogenation plant, at Kallo, has reached mechanical completion. The plant has annual capacity of 750,000 tonnes, and operations are expected to start in the first half of 2027. In Burghausen, Germany, work continues on the Borstar Nextension polypropylene project, where WAM said construction began in September 2026. In Austria, the company recently opened its Schwechat speciality polypropylene compounding plant after a €100 million expansion.

Chief executive Roger Kearns said, according to WAM, that the company is investing in innovation and in specialised, high-performance products for customers. "We are unlocking new capacity through our strategic growth and expansion projects, strengthening our global polyolefins platform and generating long-term value for our shareholders," chief operating officer Hasan Karam said, as quoted by The National.

Why It Matters

The higher target shows how ADNOC is using cheap domestic ethane to grow a downstream chemicals business that now reaches across Europe and North America through the combined group. Polyolefins, which include polyethylene and polypropylene, make up nearly half of plastics consumption in Europe, according to the trade association Plastics Europe, as cited by The National.

Export routes remain a concern. In May, Borouge and AD Ports Group agreed to study an alternative export hub at Fujairah on the UAE's east coast. That would let the company ship around the Strait of Hormuz, where shipping has been heavily disrupted during the US-Iran war, The National reported.