Pequiven and Petrocasas: some facts and figures

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This is a translation of a previous post.

The Petrocasas' project has always caught my attention. Most people in Venezuela, with some entrepreneurship flame in their hearts, think about building houses. There are around 2,500,000 families without a house simply because they aren´t any available.

The questions I want to answer in this post are:

- How much PVC does the Petrocasa project consumes?
- How much percentage is this consumption compared with total PVC production?

These are the facts:

A Petrocasa factory consumes about 3 tons of material per house.
It can consume around 400 kg/hour of raw materials.
Venezuela produces around 180 mty of PVC

If all Venezuelan PVC production is used to build Petrocasas you can build 60.000 houses.

The project goal is to built 15.000 houses/year, consuming around 30 - 45 mty of PVC. Consequently an 20% of national PVC production!!!.

As an ending note, if PVC production does not increase, the Petrocasas project can be compromised.

PVC in Venezuela

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Ok, I will translate one of previous entries in spanish.

The PVC or polyvinyl chloride is +30 year polymer product. In all these the process has become much safer (the monomer is a known carcinogenic compound), and their application are broader and broader. Their biggest blow was when it was forbidden to use it to contain potable water. Specifically its production in Venezuela started in 1979, and currently has an installed capacity of 190 MTA (which it expected to double by 2013).

The internal demand of PVC in Venezuela is about the 200 MTA, therefore there is little export margin. Although when those new capacity comes online, Venezuela will produce the double of its consumption and approximately an 20% of all the latinamerican market.

However, comparing the use of PVC in Venezuela, by CONAPRI figures, 80% of the production is used in piping. Comparing this percentage with other regions, apparently there is a huge margin for development. In fact, the so called "Petrocasas", are a good step.

In my opinion, more interest should be focused in producing PVC profiles and packaging.