Arkema announces sale of Peninsula Polymers to Investment Group

(arkema) -- Arkema Coating Resins, a business unit of Arkema, has announced the sale of the Peninsula Polymers business, a national distributor of coatings raw materials headquartered in North Kansas City, MO. The business has been purchased by an investment group led by the current management team; terms of the sale were not disclosed.

The distributor was acquired by Arkema Inc. as part of the purchase of the coating resins business of Cook Composites and Polymers in 2011. Peninsula Polymers will continue to represent certain Arkema Coating Resins lines in North America.

"We are pleased to announce the sale has been closed, and that Peninsula Polymers will continue to distribute our products," said Richard D. Jenkins, global group president for Arkema Coating Resins. "We believe that the change of ownership will be smooth and seamless, and is in the best long term interest of our customers now being served by Peninsula Polymers."

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(borealisgroup) -- The pipe grade polypropylene (PP) from Borealis, a leading provider of chemical and innovative plastics solutions, was chosen for a recently completed upgrade and enlargement of a sewage network in the Czech Republic for bordering municipalities Ivancice and Oslavany.

The sewage network owners aimed to reduce leakages and the risk of groundwater pollution from the existing system. The project involved the replacement of 26 kilometres of ageing concrete pipes which were corroded and cracked, as well as an extension of the waste water network to connect an additional 15% of households.
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(basf) -- BASF announced its plans to build a world scale production plant for formic acid at its integrated "Verbund" site in Geismar, Louisiana.

The new plant will create 20 new jobs and have an annual capacity of more than 50,000 tons. It will be the only formic acid production plant in North America and will allow BASF to better serve strategic markets in North and South America including applications for pharmaceuticals, energy, animal nutrition, leather and cleaning products. Start-up of the new plant is expected in the 2nd quarter 2014.

BASF currently operates two formic acid production plants located at the company's integrated Verbund sites in Ludwigshafen, Germany, and Nanjing, China, with a total annual capacity of more than 255,000 tons.

BASF's customers use formic acid as an eco-friendly solution in a wide range of applications such as in animal feed where it provides protection of the feed and supports the health of the animal itself. Potassium formate, a salt of formic acid, is an environmentally friendly and highly efficient de-icing agent used on roads and airport runways. It is easily biodegradable thereby protecting aquatic wildlife in nearby rivers and watersheds.


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(plasteurope) -- Chevron Phillips Chemical (CPChem, The Woodlands, Texas / USA) has wrapped up the study of where to locate two new polyethylene lines - part of the group's US Gulf Coast Petrochemicals Project.


At the beginning of May 2012, the US petrochemical giant announced that the two lines, with an estimated capacity of 500,000 t/y each, would be built near its existing Sweeny / Old Ocean facility in Texas. CPChem also said the lines, which will be designed by Jacobs Engineering Group (Pasadena, California / USA), will utilise its proprietary Loop Slurry Technology. CPChem's current cracker capacity in Sweeny stands at almost 1.9m t/y.


The US group simultaneously announced that it had reached a front-end engineering and design (FEED) agreement with Shaw Energy & Chemicals, part of Shaw Group (Baton Rouge, Louisiana / USA), whereby the latter will design CPChem's 1.5m t/y ethane cracker in Cedar Bayou, Texas. The group said it expects to complete its entire Gulf Coast petrochemicals hub - which will create about 400 long-term and an estimated 10,000 construction jobs - by 2017.
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(evonik) -- Evonik Industries established a joint venture, Evonik Acrylics Africa (EAA), with the South African plastics processor Ampaglas Plastics Group for extrusion of PLEXIGLAS sheet products. The new company is headquartered in Elandsfontein, Johannesburg.

The goal of the joint venture, in which Evonik holds a 51 percent stake, is the production of high-quality PLEXIGLAS sheeting and its marketing, particularly in the growth markets of the African continent. The focus here lies on the building and architecture market segments, the design-oriented lighting technologies segment, and furniture, shopfitting, and exhibition booth construction.

"The new company combines the advantages of both its parents: production of innovative products by high international quality standards, coupled with high flexibility and short response times as a result of local production," says Michael Traxler, head of Evonik's Acrylic Polymers Business Line. Evonik ensures a continuous supply of raw materials from its production sites for molding compounds in Germany, China, and the U.S.
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