Astana, Kazakhstan, June 20, 2025 – Jiang Dejun, Secretary of the Party Committee and Deputy General Manager of Sinopec Refining & Chemical Engineering Co., Ltd., led a delegation to attend the signing ceremony of the EPC contract for the 500,000 tons/year polyethylene plant and supporting public works of the Silleno project in Kazakhstan together with Sha Yu, General Manager of Sinopec Shanghai Engineering Co., Ltd. With a contract value of US$1.25 billion, the project is the largest single engineering contract of the year won by SEG in a country along the Belt and Road, marking the successful entry of Sinopec's high-end petrochemical engineering and technical services into the core market of Central Asia.

Strong alliance to build an international benchmark project

As a key project of Kazakhstan's national petrochemical strategic planning, the Silleno project will fill the gap of high-end polyethylene products in the country after completion. SEG Innovation adopts the model of "Chinese side leading international consortium", with Sinopec Shanghai Engineering Co., Ltd. as the main body, Sinopec Ningbo Engineering Co., Ltd. and Italian Tecnilmont S.p.A. to form a transnational joint combat team. This complementary cooperation structure not only gives full play to SEG's patented technology advantages in the field of ethylene crackers, has 16 independent intellectual property rights process packages, but also integrates the rich experience of European engineering companies in polyolefin plants, and finally stands out among five international competitors, including GS of South Korea and Technip of France.

The whole chain capability wins the market breakthrough

The project lasted 28 months from tracking to landing, and SEG demonstrated its complete international operation capabilities: a team of process experts was dispatched at the front-end design stage to optimize the anti-freezing design of the device according to the climatic characteristics of the Caspian Sea region;

In business negotiations, the "Euro-RMB" dual-currency settlement scheme was innovatively proposed to effectively avoid exchange rate risks; In the implementation phase, a digital delivery system will be adopted to achieve collaborative design between China and Kazakhstan. According to Jiang, the project is expected to drive more than $200 million in Chinese equipment exports and create more than 800 local jobs.

The strategic fulcrum of deep cultivation of the Central Asian market

The signing brings SEG's contract in hand in Kazakhstan to more than US$3 billion, forming a market structure with the Atyrau Refinery Upgrade Project (2019), Shymkent Petrochemical Retrofit Project (2021) and the Silleno Project as the pillars. The company has embarked on the establishment of a Central Asia regional operation center in Almaty, with plans to increase the proportion of Central Asia revenue from the current 18% to 30% over the next five years.

Sun Lili, chairman of Sinopec Refining & Chemical Engineering Group, pointed out in her congratulatory message that the implementation of the project will systematically verify five industry-leading technologies such as Sinopec's modular construction technology for large-scale ethylene plants, and accumulate key achievements for the subsequent development of GTL projects in Uzbekistan and natural gas chemical projects in Turkmenistan. With the start of detailed design at the end of 2023, SEG is taking concrete actions to implement the Belt and Road Initiative and promote Sinopec's engineering standards, including 12 SEG enterprise standards, to the international market.(This article is from the official website of Seetao www.seetao.com. Reprinting without permission is strictly prohibited. Please indicate Seetao.com + original link when reprinting) Seetao.com Strategy Column Editor/Sun Fengjuan