The av­er­age, undis­count­ed price of methanol sold by Cana­di­an-owned Methanex was US$436 a tonne, some 24 per cent more than the com­mod­i­ty's av­er­age price in the pe­ri­od a year ear­li­er. This in­for­ma­tion is con­tained in a re­port of Methanex's per­for­mance dur­ing the first quar­ter of 2011. The com­pa­ny re­port­ed that its net in­come at­trib­ut­able to its share­hold­ers was US$34.6 mil­lion for the first quar­ter of 2011, which was 28 per cent more than the first quar­ter of 2010. Methanex has two methanol plants at the Point Lisas In­dus­tri­al Es­tate, Ti­tan and At­las, in which it has a 63.1 per cent stake. The mi­nor­i­ty share­hold­er in At­las is BP.

While the Methanex pro­duc­tion ca­pac­i­ty in Trinidad is 513,000 tonnes a quar­ter, the com­pa­ny's pro­duc­tion dur­ing the first quar­ter was 384,000 tonnes "as a re­sult of un­planned main­te­nance ac­tiv­i­ties com­plet­ed at the Ti­tan fa­cil­i­ty which last­ed ap­prox­i­mate­ly 35 days dur­ing the first quar­ter of 2011." Bruce Aitken, Pres­i­dent and CEO of Methanex com­ment­ed, "Methanol pric­ing con­tin­ued to be firm in the first quar­ter and we re­port­ed sim­i­lar earn­ings to last quar­ter. En­ter­ing the sec­ond quar­ter, methanol de­mand con­tin­ues to be strong and in­dus­try con­di­tions re­main rel­a­tive­ly bal­anced." Aitken added, "I am de­light­ed to re­port that the Egypt plant be­gan ship­ments ear­li­er this month and the Med­i­cine Hat plant pro­duced first methanol last week.

With the in­creased pro­duc­tion and cash flow gen­er­a­tion these plants pro­vide and the pos­i­tive out­look for the methanol in­dus­try, we are pleased to an­nounce an in­crease to our reg­u­lar div­i­dend. This in­crease rep­re­sents the sev­enth time we have in­creased our div­i­dend since it was im­ple­ment­ed in 2002."

Aitken con­clud­ed, "We have a strong bal­ance sheet with US$240 mil­lion of cash on hand and an un­drawn cred­it fa­cil­i­ty, and we be­lieve we are well po­si­tioned to con­tin­ue to in­vest to grow the Com­pa­ny."

Methanex an­nounced that its board ap­proved a 10 per cent in­crease to its quar­ter­ly div­i­dend to share­hold­ers, from US$0.155 to US$0.17 per share. The com­pa­ny pro­duced 801,000 tonnes of methanol dur­ing the quar­ter.