The Middle East conflict is creating shortages of a key component for plastics, threatening to force temporary plant closures and deepening a shakeout of Asia’s petrochemicals industry.
Japan and South Korea, which had already been shutting struggling facilities before the war in Iran, are now exposed to shortages of naphtha, a material derived from crude oil and used to produce plastic goods.
Both countries import roughly two-thirds of their naphtha supply. Of this, about 60 per cent comes from the Gulf for South Korea, while the amount is 70 per cent for Japan, according to Sparta Commodities, an oil information provider.
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