EPS imports to Russia reduced in October

Summarizing the ten months the volume of EPS imports supplies exceeded 81 KT which is 24% more compared to the supplies during the same period last year.

It is expected that along with the start-up of EPS production in Perm the dependence of the Russian market will be reduced on average by 4,5 KT a month. New production on the basis of SIBUR-Himprom facilities (Group of the companies SIBUR) was launched mid-November, but because of technical failures it was suspended.

For more detailed information on polystyrene market see DataScope.

MRC

(China Plastic&Rubber Journal) -- RadiciGroup, the Italian company with business in chemicals, plastics, synthetic fibers and textiles, has released its 2009 Sustainability Report, an annual overview of the group's activities and achievements in the field of corporate social responsibility.

RadiciGroup is an industrial enterprise with a fully vertically integrated polyamide production chain. And full vertical integration is the aspect the group intends to leverage in order to enhance the environmental sustainability of its entire production chain: from polymerization to downstream plastics compounding and synthetic fibers production.

MRC

(China Plastic&Rubber Journal) -- Eastman Chemical Company announced that it has received full registration for its Eastman 168 non-phthalate plasticizer in accordance with the Registration, Evaluation, Authorisation, and Restriction of Chemicals (REACH) Regulation.

This registration entitles Eastman to import, manufacture or use Eastman 168 in quantities exceeding 1,000 tons per year - the highest volume registration band under REACH.

A versatile plasticizer for PVC, Eastman 168 non-phthalate plasticizer was the first of many non-phthalate plasticizers Eastman has submitted for REACH registration. Having recently acquired Genovique Specialties Corporation and its family of benzoate plasticizer products, Eastman is completing REACH registration for its full portfolio of non-phthalate plasticizers.

MRC

(Plastemart) -- INEOS has embarked on restarting one of its Chocolate Bayou crackers in Texas, which were downed by lightning on 1 November. Outage at this plant triggered a significant rally in ethylene spot prices, as per ICIS. With two steam crackers in Chocolate Bayou, INEOS has a combined ethylene capacity of 1.8 mln tpa.

Olefins 1, with 907,000 tpa ethylene capacity is being restarted. The second cracker is unlikely to restart until mid-December.

The outage at Chocolate Bayou triggered a 27% surge in US ethylene spot prices, which had already been rising as a result of planned and unplanned shutdowns at four other units in prior weeks. Ethylene for November soared to US$1146/ton after the INEOS shutdown, rising from a deal done at 41 cents/lb only a couple of days before the outages.

Last week saw additional gains in ethylene on news of an extended outage at a Louisiana cracker. November ethylene traded as high as 53.50 cents/lb on 9 November, its highest level since the last week of April.

MRC

(ICIS) -- LyondellBasell plans to keep US butadiene (BD) on allocation in December amid continued strong demand for the product, the company said on Friday in a letter sent to customers. The restriction was set at 85%, compared with 90% in November.

LyondellBasell last week rescinded its force majeure (FM) on BD, which had been in place since 18 May following mechanical problems at its Channelview extraction unit in Texas. The company said those problems were corrected during planned maintenance in October.

But LyondellBasell said BD demand for December was well above historical norms, adding that for that reason it was unable to meet 100% of its customers' needs. The company also has two steam crackers in Channelview, each with 873,000 tonnes/year of capacity.

MRC