text: 16 July 2008 11:44 [Source: ICIS news]
  SINGAPORE (ICIS news)--Chinese dimethyl ether (DME) producers were running their plants at operating rates around 40-45% due to a drop in demand from the liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) market, industry sources said on Wednesday.
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  Hebei, northern China-based Kaiyue Chemicals reduced its operating rate to around 30% at its newly-built 500,000 tonne/year DME unit, a company source said, adding the reason was mainly attributed to squeezed margins resulted from high feedstock methanol prices and a lull in LPG demand.
  “We could get margins above CNY1,000/tonne [$147/tonne] before, while the margins were less than CNY200/tonne now,” the source said.
  A number of other smaller producers were also reported to have lowered operating rates. Kaiyue Chemicals is the second largest DME producer in
  ($1 = CNY6.82)
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