Honda sees sharp drop in profit

(bbc) -- Japan's third biggest carmaker, Honda, has announced a 41% drop in quarterly profit, as it continues to feel the impact of Japan's March disasters, the floods in Thailand, and the high yen.

Net profit for the third quarter fell to 47.6bn yen (USD 624m; GBP 396m) from 81.1bn yen a year earlier. Sales for the three-month period fell 8% to 1.94tn yen.

The company also slashed its annual forecast. It now expects a net profit of 215bn yen for the year to March. In August it had estimated a profit of 230bn yen before withdrawing its guidance citing uncertainty due to the Thai floods.

Honda was the slowest carmaker to recover from the earthquake and tsunami in Japan in March 2011. It also has a factory in Thailand, which has been closed since October's floods. It is expects to resume production there at the end of March.

In 2011, Honda's global output dropped by a fifth to 2.9 million cars, slipping below 3 million for the first time in eight years. The firm also said it was seeing a "negative currency effect" due to appreciation of the Japanese yen.

A strong currency hurts exporters as it makes their products more expensive for overseas buyers.

MRC

(chemmonitor) -- Saudi Basic Industries Corporation (SABIC) announced results for the 4th quarter 2011 and fiscal year 2011. The net income in Q4 2011 amounted to Saudi Riyals (SAR) 5.24 billion. It is 9.8% lower in comparison to the same period last year. Moreover, this figure is much lower SAR 7.4 billion expected by analysts.

Sales increased, but the lower prices for most of company's products led to the net profit decrease. The gross profit in Q4 2011 reached SAR 13.38 billion, a 3% year on year increase.

Saudi Basic Industries Corporation is the world's biggest petrochemical company by market value and one of the world's leading manufacturers of chemicals, performance chemicals, fertilizers, plastics and metals.

Its product portfolio includes ethylene, propylene, butadiene, MTBE, styrene monomer, benzene, paraxylene, caustic soda, acetone, phenol, methanol, etc. The company has operations in more than 25 countries and over 33,000 employees worldwide.

SABIC is traded on the Saudi Stock Exchange (Tadawul) under the ticker symbol 2010.

MRC

(polyestertime) -- Soft drink manufacturers are on track to reach zero waste to landfill by 2015 - however, maintaining product quality remains a key challenge.

This was the conclusion of a recent report recent report from the British Soft Drinks Association (BSDA) that reviewed the sector's sustainability progress - the Soft Drinks Industry Sustainability Strategy, launched in 2008.

The report builds on tough ambitions for waste reduction, as well as those included within phase 2 of WRAP's Courtauld Commitment.

Setting out packaging waste reductions already achieved by the sector, the study outlines how drinks manufacturers can further reduce the impact of their packaging and work towards waste prevention.

Brands like Coca-Cola and Pepsico tend to go for a "blended PET and degradable solution" while also investing in plant-derived plastics and selling it as an alternative to oil as it has no degradability issues.


Last year Coca-Cola launched a plant bottle for its 500ml products. Featuring 25% recycled content, it includes up to 22.5% of PET derived from renewable plant sources rather than hydrocarbons from petrochemical sources - saving more than 60,000 barrels of oil each year.

MRC

(braskem) --Braskem Americas reported emissions resulting from a boiler failure at its polypropylene (PP) plant in LaPorte, Texas, according to a government filing available on Monday.

A temporary boiler that was replacing the plant's C boiler during maintenance failed, causing a loss of steam to the B flare, the company said in a filing with the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ).


The loss of steam resulted in the flare smoking intermittently for about an hour, the filing states. All emissions were either recovered or sent to a flare for destruction, according to the filing.

It was not clear whether the unit had been restarted, or whether there was any lost production at the plant. A company spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Braskem Americas operates a 390,000 tonne/year PP plant at the facility.

MRC

(vestolit) -- The German company Vestolit announced increases in its Europe PVC prices of EUR90/tonne for paste applications and EUR100/tonne for thermoplastic applications effective from 1 February, a company source said on Monday.

The increasing trend for the procurement of raw materials to manufacture PVC products could not be compensated adequately in the past few months and now leads to a price adjustment for paste and thermoplastic products, said company in the press-release.

MRC