MedPlast is looking for acquisition candidates in manufacturing in Latin America and Asia

(PlasticsToday) -- Three-year-old MedPlast (Tempe, AZ) is looking for acquisition candidates in healthcare contract manufacturing in Latin America and Asia, and hopes to expand its global footprint within two years.

"If you want to be successful in a region of the world, you need to have a permanent presence there," Harold Faig, CEO of MedPlast told PlasticsToday.com in an interview. "And I'm not a fan of building from scratch. My focus is to go where the customers are and generally that means you need to buy facilities and optimize them to what is needed."

MedPlast operates five plants in the United States that were part of its acquisition of the engineered rubber and plastics group of Applied Tech Products Corp. and K&W Medical Specialties in 2008 just as a major recession was taking hold. Faig ordered a restructuring to improve costs as well as investment in new capabilities required for a medical market focus.


MRC

(PRNewswire) -- LyondellBasell Industries today announced the early tender results of the previously announced cash tender offer (the "Tender Offer") by its wholly-owned subsidiary, Lyondell Chemical Company (the "Company"), for up to $1,470,134,000 aggregate principal amount of the Company's outstanding 8% Senior Secured Dollar Notes due 2017 (the "Dollar Notes") and 8% Senior Secured Euro Notes due 2017 (the "Euro Notes" and together with the Dollar Notes, the "8% Notes"), and up to $1,318,672,000 aggregate principal amount of the Company's outstanding 11% Senior Secured Dollar Notes due 2018 (the "11% Notes" and together with the 8% Notes, the "Notes") and consent solicitation (the "Consent Solicitation) to amend certain terms of the Notes and the indentures governing the Notes to release certain of the collateral securing the Notes and modify other provisions relating to restrictive covenants.

As the Tender Offer is oversubscribed with respect to each series of Notes, the Company has accepted for purchase tendered Notes on a prorated basis in the manner described in the Statement. Holders who tender Notes or deliver Consents after the Early Tender/Consent Deadline will not have any of their Notes or Consents accepted for payment.

MRC

(Dow Jones) -- Thai refiner and petrochemical producer IRPC PCL expects fourth-quarter revenue to fall 30% from a year earlier due mainly to a planned 45-day maintenance shut down, Chief Executive Atikom Terbsiri said Wednesday. He said the planned shutdown coincides with slowing local demand as Thailand is facing the worst flood in decades.

Most of Thailand's central provinces are submerged by the floods, including vast areas of farmland and industrial estates that are global production bases of electronics and automobile parts. The inundation of those estates has materially disrupted global production in both industries.

MRC

(Sabic) -- SABIC's Innovative Plastics business, Chongqing Xiyong Micro-electronics Industrial Park, and the Chongqing Economic and Informatization Commission announced a memorandum of understanding where SABIC would establish an engineering thermoplastics compounding plant in Chongqing, China. The move supports the Chinese government's 12th Five-Year Plan to expand into the country's western region and reinforces SABIC's commitment to build on its long heritage of serving this important marketplace with innovative and consistently high-quality materials solutions. Chongqing has already established itself as an important industrial hub for global computer, consumer electronics and automotive manufacturers - critical industry segments that SABIC has long served with local materials technology and manufacturing, application development expertise, and design assistance.

This is SABIC's third Chinese engineering thermoplastics investment this year. Earlier announcements include SABIC's memorandum of understanding with Sinopec to collaborate on polycarbonate production in China. A joint investment between both companies would fund a new polycarbonate product plant with an annual capacity of 260 kilo-metric tons. The second announcement was investments in new production lines for SABIC's Lexan polycarbonate resins and films in both Shanghai and Nansha in 2012. This comes on the heels of a similar Lexan compounding expansion in Nansha late last year.

MRC

(BASF) -- BASF plans to increase the production capacity of its insulation material Neopor (EPS, expandable polystyrene) in stages at its Ludwigshafen site by around 60,000 metric tons per year from December 2011 and is set to achieve full capacity by October 2013 at the latest. The gray Neopor is an advanced version of Styropor. It gets its color and unique performance by the addition of graphite particles - Neopor offers an improved insulating performance of up to 20% over the white EPS insulating material.


The increased capacity will be achieved by expanding existing production plants; this is the second increase in Neopor capacity at the Ludwigshafen site within three years. The international trend towards highly efficient insulating materials, particularly for use in external envelopes, continues apace. " We are investing in our plants so that we can extend our market leadership in gray EPS insulating materials even further" , explains Dr. Giorgio Greening, Head of BASF's global Foams Business Unit. In 1998, BASF was the first EPS manufacturer to include a gray insulating material in its portfolio. Its additional investment means that the company can offer its customers greater security of supply.


MRC