Total names Desmarest chairman and Pouyann CEO

MOSCOW (MRC) -- French oil major Total appointed refining head Patrick Pouyanne as chief executive and former CEO Thierry Desmarest as non-executive chairman, said the company in its press release.

The nominations at the head of the world's fourth-largest integrated oil company came less than 48 hours after the brutal death of Chairman and CEO Christophe de Margerie in a plane crash in Moscow.

Desmarest, previously honorary chairman of the oil group, will keep his new position until the end of 2015, after which the roles of CEO and chairman would again be combined, Total said in a statement following an emergency board meeting.

Pouyanne, 51, had a key role in merging Total's loss-making "downstream" refining and petrochemical units in recent years, and also had senior roles at the group's "upstream" exploration units in Angola and Qatar.

Pouyanne will likely face a politically sensitive situation in France, where he told unions earlier this year that Total would seek to cut capacity among its five refineries, with more details about the plan expected next spring.

The company will be hoping to avoid a repeat of its problems in 2010 when Total's decision to close down the Dunkirk refinery prompted weeks of strikes by angry unions and disrupted French oil supplies.

A graduate of France's elite Polytechnique and Ecole des Mines engineering colleges, Pouyanne was also a ministerial advisor under previous conservative governments.

Desmarest, 68, headed the group during the mergers of Total with Petrofina and then Elf in 1999.

MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Dow Chemical, the largest US chemical maker by sales, said this year’s plunging oil prices will stimulate national economies and help rather than hurt its plastics business next year, reported Hydrocarbonprocessing.

Lower oil prices should help increase gross domestic product in the US, the UK, Japan and China, Howard Ungerleider, chief financial officer of Midland, Michigan-based Dow, said on a conference call with analysts. The positive effect will become more visible through 2015, he said.

"Low oil price means more demand in the GDP," CEO Andrew Liveris said on the call.

Brent crude, the benchmark for global oil trading, has plunged more than 20% from its June high to about USD86/bbl, meeting a common definition of a bear market. Oil prices should rebound to more than USD100/bbl next year as economies strengthen, Liveris said.

While lower oil prices probably are an indication of weak economic growth, Liveris’ bullish comments on the decline and Dow’s third-quarter results are "calming" for investors, said John Roberts, a New York-based analyst at UBS Securities.

The oil drop narrows margins for ethane-based plastics and could erode sales volumes in the fourth quarter as customers cut inventories at year-end, Liveris said. Still, US ethane remains among the cheapest feedstocks in the world even with oil at USD80, Ungerleider said. Cheaper oil also boosts profitability at Dow’s plastics operations in Europe, he said.

As cheaper oil helps global economies expand, plastics- industry ethylene plants will run, on average, at 91% of capacity by early 2016, up from 90% at the end of this year and 88% at the start of the year, Ungerleider said. That will give Dow the ability to keep raising prices, he said.

Global economic growth is expected to rise to 3.4% or more next year, up from 2.8% this year, the CFO said.

As MRC wrote before, Hanwha Chemical, one of South Korea's leading polyethylene and polyvinyl chloride producers, has picked Credit Suisse to advise on possible purchases from Dow Chemical's chloro-alkali business but its interest is still in the early stages. The spokesman for Hanwha said no details had been decided.

The Dow Chemical Company is an American multinational chemical corporation. As of 2007, it is the second-largest chemical manufacturer in the world by revenue (after BASF) and as of February 2009, the third-largest chemical company in the world by market capitalization (after BASF and DuPont). Dow is a large producer of plastics, including polystyrene, polyurethane, polyethylene, polypropylene, and synthetic rubber.
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Celanese Corporation, a global technology and specialty materials company, has announced an increase in intermediate chemistry prices for the European market, as per the company's press release.

Thus, the company will increase list and off-list selling prices for the following products effective November 1, 2014, or as contracts allow:

- ethyl acetate - by EUR50/tonne;
- butyl acetate - by EUR 50/tonne.

As MRC reported earlier, in early October 2014, Celanese Corporation announced that it would increase the price of vinyl acetate-based emulsions sold in the Americas. Thus, PVAc homopolymer, vinyl acetate ethylene (EVA) and vinyl acrylic emulsions will increase by up to USD0.05/wet pound effective November 1, 2014, or as contracts allow.

This increase is attributed to the continued pressures on raw materials, notably vinyl acetate monomer (VAM), and freight.

This price increase affects all applications including, but not limited to, adhesives, paints and coatings, building products, nonwovens, glass fiber, carpet, paper and textiles.

Celanese Corporation is a global technology leader in the production of differentiated chemistry solutions and specialty materials used in most major industries and consumer applications. Based in Dallas, Texas, Celanese employs approximately 7,400 employees worldwide and had 2013 net sales of USD6.5 billion.
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- German specialty chemicals company Lanxess has introduced innovative and polybutylene terephthalate (PBT) and polyamide grades for the automotive industry, reported the company on its site.

Lanxess sees great potential for the use of PBT and polyamide compounds in production of vehicle exterior body parts - for example bumpers, sills, front grilles, door handles, fuel tank flaps, spoilers and mirror housings.

"That is why we are building up a wide range of Durethan and Pocan materials for this use segment. The development work is focusing on application-specific, optimized mechanical properties, as well as good surface qualities and good paintability," says Frank Krause, design expert at Lanxess.

An innovative material for fuel tank flaps, for example, is Pocan B 5220 XF reinforced with a glass bead content of 20%. The product is an alternative to blends of polyphenylene ethers and polyamide (PPE+PA), which are often used in series-produced fuel tank flaps because they can be painted online. A disadvantage of such blends, however, is their high degree of moisture absorption, which has an undesirable effect on the required dimensional accuracy. PBT, by contrast, stands out by virtue of its high degree of dimensional stability.

Besides, Lanxess has specially developed Pocan TP 406-001 for radiator grilles. "The non-reinforced polycarbonate+PBT blend material was conceived primarily for parts with Class A surfaces, which are given a high-gloss coating," Krause says. The material displays very low and uniform shrinkage and hardly any tendency to distortion at all. Thanks to the blend's extreme toughness even in cold temperatures, the radiator grille does not shatter into shards in the event of a collision, which helps protect nearby pedestrians. The high heat deflection temperature ensures that long, horizontal grille fins do not sag as a result of exposure to the radiator heat.

For exterior bodywork parts that are not coated online, the LANXESS product line continues to feature materials including non-reinforced (PBT+PC) and (PET+PC) blends, and reinforced (PBT+PET) blends. A good choice for spoilers, for example, is Pocan TP 957-001, which consists of up to 25 percent post-consumer recyclate from PET bottles. The mineral-reinforced (PET+PC) blend is very impact-resistant and displays minimal distortion, among other properties. Durethan DP 2131/20 W1 EF, a heat-stabilized polyamide 6 with easy flow characteristics, is a great material for substructures of spoilers, exterior mirror housings and door handles. It provides non-coated exterior bodywork parts with excellent resistance to weathering.

As MRC informed previously, in early July, 2013, Lanxess celebrated the opening of its first production facility in Russia. In the new plant at the Lipetsk site, Lanxess subsidiary Rhein Chemie manufactures polymer-bound rubber additives for the markets in Russia and the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), primarily for the automotive and tire industries. A production facility for the bladders used in tire production is to be added in 2016.

Lanxess is a leading specialty chemicals company with sales of EUR 8.3 billion in 2013 and roughly 17,300 employees in 31 countries. The company is currently represented at 52 production sites worldwide. The core business of Lanxess is the development, manufacturing and marketing of plastics, rubber, intermediates and specialty chemicals.
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Tetra Pak today announces the launch of the industry’s first carton made entirely from plant based, renewable packaging materials, said the company in its press-release.

The new Tetra Rex carton will be the first in the market to have bio-based low-density polyethylene (LDPE) films and bio-based high-density polyethylene (HDPE) caps, both derived from sugar cane, in addition to Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certified paperboard.

"Environment excellence is one of Tetra Pak’s strategic priorities and a driver of our product development activities," said Charles Brand, VP Marketing & Product Management at Tetra Pak. "Together with suppliers, customers and other stakeholders, we are leading the industry towards 100% renewable packaging. We believe that increasing the renewable content of our packages is not only good for the environment, but also offers our customers a competitive advantage in the overall environmental profile of their products."

As MRC wrote before, Braskem SA, the world's largest biopolymer producer, in January 2014 launched a new line of green low density polyethylene. Annual production of the new LDPE line will be approximately 66 million pounds.

Developed in partnership with Braskem, one of the world’s leading biopolymers producers, the new Tetra Rex package will be commercially available in early 2015. Tetra Pak customers using the standard 1 litre Tetra Rex with TwistCap OSO 34 can easily transfer to the new version without the need for any additional investment or modification to their existing filling machines.
MRC