Italian, Taiwanese firms join to serve China's plastics extrusion market

(Plastics Today) -- A new joint venture is being formed in China by Taiwan's Shini Plastics Technologies Inc. (Taipei) and Italy's Syncro srl (Busto Arsizio) to serve the automation needs of processors of extruded products. The venture opens China's fast-growing market to Syncro's products while helping Shini expand its customer base, to now mostly injection molders.

Based in Dongguan, Guangdong Province, Shini-Syncro Extrusion Control Inc. will manufacture and provide products and services in the fields of gravimetric dosing and mixing systems, central conveying systems, film-thickness measurement and control systems, and central monitoring systems for extrusion lines. The joint venture will integrate the advanced extrusion line process-control expertise of Syncro with Shini's advantages of global marketing channels and low-cost manufacturing.

Shini's core business is the manufacture and sales of plastics auxiliary equipment including dryers, feeders and conveyors, dosers and mixers, mold-temperature regulators, granulators and recycling equipment, robots, and hot runner systems. As such, its traditional customers have been injection molders.

MRC

SHANGHAI (plastics news) -- South Korean additives maker Songwon Industrial Co. Ltd. plans to buy a 30 percent stake in China's Tangshan Baifu Chemical Ltd., to extend its product range and better penetrate the Chinese market.

Ulsan, South Korea-based Songwon said it has the option of buying up to 50 percent of Tangshan, and company executives said the investment is the first of others they expect to make in China. Terms of the Tangshan investment were not disclosed.

Tangshan, located just outside the city of Tianjin, is the largest producer of thioester additives in China, and Songwon said it will initially focus the venture's manufacturing on its Songnox DLTDP and Songnox DSTDP thioesters for both China and the global market.

MRC

HOUSTON (ICIS news)--A US bankruptcy court confirmed on Friday LyondellBasell's reorganisation plan, a development that could get the chemical major out of bankruptcy protection by 30 April and on the New York Stock Exchange by the third quarter of this year, the company said.

The court confirmation kicked off a series of events called for by the company's reorganisation plan, a blueprint for LyondellBasell's emergence from Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.

The plan incorporated several settlements with creditors and environmental regulators.

A key part of that plan was a court-approved equity offering, under which Lyondell would convert about $18bn (┬14bn) of senior and bridge-loan debt into class A shares in the company.

Upon exiting bankruptcy protection, Lyondell expected to have roughly $7.2bn of total consolidated debt, the company said. In addition, LyondellBasell should have about $2bn of cash and about $2.4bn of lending commitments.

The reorganisation also created a new parent holding company, LyondellBasell Industries, incorporated in the Netherlands. The company's corporate seat would be in Rotterdam, LyondellBasell said, with administrative offices in Rotterdam and Houston.

MRCMRC Reference

LyondellBasell. The share in the Russian market in 2008:
PE - 1.4% (including HDPE - 2.5%, LDPE - 0.3%);
PP - 4.1% (including block-copolymers - 9.5%).

Annual sales growth in Russia, during the recent 5 years:
PE - 27%;
PP - 88%.

The leader in the following polymers processing technologies:

pipe extrusion;

film extrusion;

injection molding.

(plastemart) -- Russian petrochemicals manufacturer Nizhnekamskneftekhim (NKNH) has favoured synthetic rubber expansion plan over ethylene production, to respond to international demand. The Russian major has postponed its project to build a one million tpa ethylene production complex in favour of a synthetic rubber expansion plan. As per original plans, NKNH planned to construct the ┬2.1 bln complex in Russia's Tatarstan semi autonomous republic as part of a five-year ┬3.2 bln investment program to 2015. As per this plan, current ethylene capacity of 600,000 tpa was planned to be doubled to 1.2 mln tpa by 2012. The complex is to have a 600,000 tpa PE capacity and one of 370,000 tpa for polypropylene.

MRCMRC Reference

Share in Russian market in 2008:

polypropylene - 25% (including

PP-block - 34.7%,

PP-random - 22.1%);

polystyrene - 34.5%.

Leader in polymer processing technologies:

sheet extrusion;

film extrusion;

threads/fibers;

moulding.

(Plastics Today) -- Polyolefins supplier Borouge, a joint venture of Borealis and the Abu Dhabi National Oil Co. (ADNOC), has opened its first production plant in China, a 50,000-tonne/yr compounding facility destined to supply the country's fast-growing automotive and household appliances markets. Plans for the site first were announced in mid-2007, and it was officially opened this week.

The event drew a high-level crowd including, from the United Arab Emirates, the Minister of Foreign Trade, the Minister of the Economy, and ADNOC's CEO, while the Chinese delegation included the Fengxian Party Committee Secretary and the mayor of Fengxian. The new compounding plant has the capacity to supply up to 50,000 tonnes of compound annually and the potential to expand by 30,000 tonnes per year. The base resins for the plant are to be supplied from Borouge's new polypropylene plants in Abu Dhabi.

In another move to strength its Chinese supply chain, Borouge is opening a logistics hub capable of handling up to 600,000 tonnes of polyolefins per year, with that hub placed adjacent to the compounding plant.

MRCMRC Reference

Borealis. The share in the Russian market in 2008:

polyethylene - 4.1% (including HDPE - 4.7%, LLDPE - 8.7%);
polypropylene - 3.2% (PP-impact - 7.5%).

Annual sales growth in Russia over the last 5 years:
polyethylene - 11%;
polypropylene - 6%.

Leader in polymers processing technologies:
extrusion coating;
cable extrusion;
injection molding.