BASF increases ammonium carbonate capacity at Ludwigshafen

(basf) -- BASF is increasing the production capacity of its ammonium bicarbonate and ammonium carbonate plant at Ludwigshafen by 30% in a move designed to cope with rising demand for high-purity food additives on the world market. The upgrade is scheduled to be complete by early 2013.

"With our technical expertise and the high quality standard of our plant, which is geared towards the most stringent requirements in the production of food additives, we are ideally placed to further strengthen our market-leading position in this segment," says Dr. Thomas Wehlage, Senior Vice President and Head of the Inorganic Chemicals business unit.

Karl Chang, Regional Head of Business Management Inorganic Chemicals Asia Pacific, adds, "The extra capacity at Ludwigshafen will enable us to meet growing demand for high-purity food additives in the Asia Pacific region too."

Ammonium bicarbonate is an important synthetic leavening agent for bakery products. The Ludwigshafen plant is not only GMP-certified (Good Manufacturing Practice) but also satisfies the high certification standards of the British Retail Consortium (BRC). The plant also manufactures certified kosher and halal products. Certifications like these give customers the assurance of the highest standard of product safety so essential in the food industry.

MRC

(chemmonitor) -- The polyvinyl chloride (PVC) market sentiment is mixed in Russia as the traditional demand rise did not take place due to the absence of the active end-products trading.

Domestic sellers anticipated a boost of the purchasing operations in the current month, but their expectations were not justified.

A temporary rise of the demand was observed in early April in the end-market. It was below the required level. Vendors' PVC inventories are still high.

MRC

(chemicals-technology) -- China-based Liansu Group, a manufacturer of plastics pipe extruder and fittings, is planning to construct a new polypropylene (PP) plant in the western Siberia region of Omsk, Russia.

Liansu has entered into collaboration with Russia-based Titan petrochemicals group for part of the construction.
The plant, which is to produce 180,000t per annum of PP, will be launched in the first half of 2012.
The PP plant, supported by Titan Group and the provincial government, is a regional joint venture development of the chemical and agricultural-industrial Park agro-industrial regional clusters.

Plans for the petrochemical cluster also include a downstream industrial park which is designed to assemble as many as 40 small and medium sized plastics processing facilities, to process PP from the plant.

According to Titan, the park should include converters of film, packaging, automotive components and medical products, to pipe, building materials and household goods.

Liansu Group European sales director Suzy Jan said, "We have rich experience of making finished products, you have the feedstock so we have all the (necessary) conditions for a successful cooperation."
Liansu plans to construct polypropylene plant
Gazprom Neft, a Russian oil company, and Sibur petrochemicals group are jointly seeking to take a stake in the Titan-Omsk PP project.

MRC

(news.szenergy) -- China has become the world's largest and most important market for polycarbonates, said BayerMaterial Science.

"In 2011, 60 percent of the global PC market is in Asia Pacific, and China occupies 50 percent of that," said Michael Koening, head of Polycarbonates Business Unit of Bayer MaterialScience, the leader in global PC market and PC-based solutions.

In order to better adjust to this market and understand customers' technical requirements, Bayer relocated its polycarbonates business unit's headquarters to Shanghai last year.

Just offering cheaper prices won't strengthen the product's presence in the Chinese market, Koening said. "I believe products like polycarbonates need innovation, which means we should come up with new ideas and solutions to very specific requirements," he noted.

As a means to cope with trends such as climate change, increasing urbanization and mobility and an aging population, Bayer has been active in developing new applications of the PC material.

MRC

(nord-stream) -- The Nord Stream Project took another major step forward today with the completion of offshore pipelay of the second of its twin 1,224-kilometre gas pipelines through the Baltic Sea ahead of schedule.

Following extensive pre-commissioning and commissioning, Line 2 is scheduled to begin transporting gas towards the end of 2012 as part of a fully automated twin-pipeline gas transport system capable of transporting 55 billion cubic metres (bcm) of gas per year from Russia to the European Union, for at least 50 years.

The last of the 99,953 steel pipes for Line 2 was made in Germany by Europipe, concrete-weight-coated at EUPEC's plant in Mukran, shipped to the Slite marshalling yard on the coast of the Swedish Island of Gotland and transported by a pipe-carrying vessel to Saipem's Castoro Sei laybarge, where it was welded onto the pipeline and lowered to the seabed on April 18, 2012. This marked also the completion of the logistics activities for the Nord Stream Project.

MRC