Chlorine-caustic production to be launched in Kalush in mid-September

KALUSH (MRC) -- Karpatneftekhim is to launch a new chlorine and caustic production in mid-September, 2010, Karpatneftekhim's CEO S.V. Chmykhalov said in Kalush.

Experts believe chlorine-caustic unit at Kalush will be the most state-of-the-art plant in Eastern Europe using membrane technology. The engineering of the project was provided by Uhde, which supplies the major equipment, as well. The overall nameplate capacity of the plant will be 200 kta of caustic soda and 180 kta of chlorine. Karpatneftekhim is controlled by Russia's oil major LUKOIL. Overall investments into the project exceeded USD 150 million.

MRC

(prw) -- Mollertech is investing $9.8m to start an injection moulding plant in Elberton, the company announced. The plant will serve automotive customers, primarily BMW.

The company's Moeller Tech unit will locate the plant in an existing 130,000-square-foot building that is already outfitted for plastics manufacturing. Mollertech, which is based in Bielefeld, Germany, said the plant will employ 75 people at its starting point.

MRC

(plastemart) -- US polypropylene maker ConocoPhillips has declared force majeure (FM) on its propylene impact copolymers deliveries in August and September. An equipment breakdown coupled with feedstock shortages has caused the supply constraints. The company anticipated it would resume normal operations sometime during September. Specific details on the equipment breakdowns were not available. The company will be unable to make up for volumes not delivered during August and September.

PP supplies continue to remain tight in USA this week with a potential for a price hike in September.

MRC

(plastemart) -- The use of UNIPOL Polypropylene (PP) Technology from Dow Basic Plastics Licensing and Catalysts continues to grow at a rapid pace in China. China Shenhua Coal to Liquid and Chemical Baotou Coal Chemical Company is the latest company to start up a plant using this technology and is the first in China to manufacture PP made from coal-generated olefins. A leader among Chinese manufacturers pioneering the coal-based production of chemicals and plastics, Shenhua Baotou Coal Chemicals Company's 300,000 tpa Polypropylene facility came online earlier this month in Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, The People's Republic of China. According to the company, its gasification technology converts coal into a synthesis gas (or syngas); syngas is used to produce methanol, which is transformed into olefins - a building block for producing polypropylene.

According to MRC data, Dow's share in the Russian market in 2008 was 2.5% of polyethylene (including LLDPE - 33.1%), 0.8% of polypropylene (including PP-impact - 1.1%) and 2.6% of polystyrene. Annual sales growth in Russia over the course of recent 5 years was 55% of polyethylene, 28% of polypropylene and 2% of polystyrene. Dow imports by pipe extrusion, film extrusion, sheet extrusion and foaming processing technologies.

MRC

(plastemart) -- Japan's Mitsui Chemicals has suspended operations at a naphtha cracker with 553,000 tpa ethylene capacity. The Ichihara plant in Chiba prefecture faced a problem with equipment, leading to the shutdown. A weekend start is not expected. Restart is likely to be announced early next week.

MRC