Polyethylene

Polyethylene is one of the most common materials in our daily lives and accounts for 40% of the total volume of world production of plastic materials. In other words, around half of the products in the sector that is generically called "plastics" is made in polyethylene. From the chemical point of view, it is a basic plastic material, or better a semi-finished industrial material used as a raw material by companies that transform it into a range of finished goods, form the most basic to the highly sophisticated. From a structural point of view, polyethylene is a derivative of ethylene, which in turn is a product derived from the refining of crude oil.

The oil refining process, from which petrol, diesel and LPG are obtained, creates what is known as heavy naphtas. Using a procedure called cracking,  these naphtas are transformed into ethylene which, after a series of processes, becomes polyethylene. The production of polyethylene is also an economically effective and ecologically intelligent way of optimising a component of oil, the world's most important energy resource.