India’s Haldia Petrochemicals trading arm plans to scale up in Asia, sources say

By Mohi Narayan

NEW DELHI (Reuters) -HPL Global, the Singapore unit of India’s Haldia Petrochemicals, plans to boost its trade volume by 30% to up to 2 million metric tons and double the number of traders in 2026, two industry sources familiar with the matter said on Wednesday.

The Singapore trading arm, which is led by Chief Executive Officer Shailendra Srivastava, has hired four traders since launching in late 2023 to trade naphtha, gasoline blendstocks, and petrochemical products such as aromatics and olefins, one of the sources said.

In addition to trading, HPL Global manages vessel chartering and risk management for its parent company. The firm relocated to a larger office in Singapore’s central business district in June.

“More traders will be joining the team next year,” the source said, adding that the company plans to expand into trading butadiene and methyl tert-butyl ether (MTBE), a gasoline-blending component.

The communications office of Haldia Petrochemicals did not respond to a Reuters request for comment.

Haldia Petrochemicals operates a 700,000 metric tons-per-year ethylene plant, with chemical processing capacity of 491,000 tons annually, and approximately 1 million tons per year of polymer processing capacity at its manufacturing facility in India’s Haldia in the eastern state of West Bengal.

The company is majority-owned by U.S.-based private equity firm The Chatterjee Group (TCG).

(Reporting by Mohi Narayan; Editing by Tom Hogue and Sherry Jacob-Phillips)