South Korea's Samsung Total Petrochemical Co Ltd said it would invest 2 trillion won ($1.72 billion) to build an aromatics plant with annual production capacity of 1 million tons of paraxylene and 420,000 tons of benzene.

With the completion of the plant and upgrades of existing paraxylene capacity, the company's total annual paraxylene capacity will reach 1.76 million tons by 2014, the joint venture between Samsung and France's Total said in a statement late on Monday.

PX is the raw material for polyester, while benzene is used in petrochemical products such as styrene.

It will also build an ethylene-vinyl acetate copolymer plant in its Daesan petrochemical complex by April 2014 with a capacity of 240,000 tons per year, the statement said. ($1 = 1163.6500 Korean won)

(Reporting by Cho Mee-young; Editing by Jonathan Hopfner)

South Korea Samsung