Construction has begun on a large-scale ethylene project in Ningbo capable of producing one million tons of ethylene per year.

The Sinopec project, which kicked off on Monday, will be located in the southern part of the Hangzhou Bay petrochemical industrial zone in east China's Zhejiang Province..

China Petrochemical Corporation (Sinopec) is investing 22 billion yuan (about 2.8 billion U.S. dollars) in the project, which will be completed in 2009.

The project features ten condensing fractionation towers, four of which will be based on cracking heater technologies jointly developed by Sinopec and the U.S. firm ABB Lummus. The other six towers will rely on Chinese technologies, said Sinopec.

The project proves that Sinopec is capable of building large-scale, hi-tech ethylene facilities with its own technologies, said company general manager Chen Tonghai.

Insiders said the project will be a boon for the textile, clothing, automobile, electronic, building materials and plastic industries.

A fundamental material in petrochemicals, ethylene is used in the manufacture of various sorts of chemical products such as plastic, chemical fibre and synthetic rubber.

The ethylene industry is an indicator of economic development in a nation or a region. China produced more than 7.5 million tons in 2005, ranking second in the world after the United States.