LANXESS invests EUR 100 million, primarily in its German sites

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Specialty chemicals company LANXESS continues to target growth. During the next three years, its business unit Advanced Industrial Intermediates will be investing some EUR 100 million in expanding production facilities for chemical intermediates, said the company on its site.

Around EUR 40 million each will be invested in the Leverkusen and Krefeld-Uerdingen sites in the federal state of North Rhine-Westphalia. The rest will be used to expand the facilities in Brunsbuttel (federal state of Schleswig-Holstein), and Antwerp (Belgium). The expansion project is scheduled for completion by 2020.

“Organic growth is a key success factor as new LANXESS heads forward. This investment program accompanies the dynamic development of our customers and their sectors. A high proportion of the planned new capacities is already backed by customers’ orders. At the same time, we are also strengthening our sites, particularly in North Rhine-Westphalia,” said Hubert Fink, member of the Board of Management of LANXESS AG.

At the Krefeld-Uerdingen site, the plan is to expand production facilities for trimethylolpropane, hexanediol and menthols to accommodate growing demand on global markets. Trimethylolpropane and hexanediol are important for products in the automotive, furniture and construction industries, for example. Synthetic menthol is a key component of many aromas and pharmaceutical products. LANXESS had already started gradually increasing the capacities for these products in recent years. Now the company is planning new expansion measures. Construction work is set to commence during the coming year.

At the Leverkusen site capacity expansion for special amines is scheduled to start this year. Special amines are mainly used as intermediates for further processing and ultimately in the automotive sector. LANXESS will considerably increase the capacity of the MEA plant at Brunsbuttel in the course of the year and will invest up to EUR 15 million for this purpose. The abbreviation MEA stands for 2-methyl-6-ethylaniline, which is required mainly as a precursor for crop protection herbicides.

At the Kallo/Antwerp site in Belgium, LANXESS will be investing a mid-single digit euro million figure to expand its production capacities for rubber chemicals.

MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- SOCAR GPC, a gas-processing project of the State Oil Company of Azerbaijan Republic (SOCAR), has selected UNIPOL PE Technology licensed by Univation Technologies for use in its world-scale 600KTA polyethylene plant to be built in Garadagh, Azerbaijan, as per Businesswire.

This project represents the first UNIPOL PE Process licensed in Azerbaijan and by SOCAR. The new polyethylene facility will take advantage of the flexibility of the UNIPOL PE Process to manufacture conventional and advanced polyethylene products covering a broad range of both high-density polyethylene (HDPE), including best-in-class HDPE injection molding grades, as well as linear low-density polyethylene (LLDPE) resin grades.

SOCAR GPC has also selected Univation’s XCAT Metallocene Polyethylene Technology for the manufacture of advanced metallocene film structures suitable for high-performance food packaging, stretch-wrap, heavy-duty sack and specialized multi-layer applications.

Production output from this new PE plant will be focused on satisfying growing polyethylene demand in both domestic and European markets in a wide range of goods.

SOCAR’s UNIPOL PE Process line will deliver a broad, flexible product mix with the agility to shift between HDPE and LLDPE over time to meet their customers’ evolving needs and underlying market opportunities. Furthermore, this world-scale 600KTA line will allow significant economy-of-scale benefits enabling both project capital cost efficiencies and ongoing highly competitive manufacturing costs.

As part of the Univation-Linde Alliance, Linde AG (Engineering Division) will complete the basic engineering design package (BEDP) for the project. In 2016, Univation and Linde Engineering entered into an Alliance relationship focused on delivering operating and capital cost advantages for both new build and retrofit projects for UNIPOL PE Technology.


MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- South Korea’s Hyundai Engineering Co said on Monday that it had signed a deal worth USUSD3.2 billion with Iran’s Ahdaf Investment Company for the construction of the second phase of a petrochemical complex in Iran, said Koreaherald.

"The project allowed us to spearhead into the Iranian construction market as a lead manager. We plan to do everything in our capacity to clinch additional projects in the future," a spokesperson for Hyundai told The Korea Herald, which noted that the deal is the largest so far signed by a South Korean company in Iran.

Hyundai Engineering will act as lead manager of the Kangan Petro Refining Complex in southwestern Iran. The petrochemical complex is planned to have an annual production of around 1 million tons of ethylene, 500,000 tons of monoethylene glycol, and 350,000 tons of heavy and light polyethylene, The Korea Herald reported.

The financing of the deal – which was signed as an Engineering, Procurement, Construction and Finance (EPCF) contract -- will be finalized within nine months by Korean banks, the Iranian oil ministry’s news service Shana said on Sunday. Construction will take 48 months, according to the Iranian news service.
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- CH2M has signed a framework agreement with Shell to provide engineering, procurement, construction and project management services across upstream, integrated gas and downstream projects globally, said Hydrocarbonprocessing.

"We are committed to improving and embracing fundamental changes to how the industry delivers engineering, procurement, and construction projects," said CH2M Chair and CEO Jacqueline Hinman. "These changes are critical to owners and service providers."

As an engineering, procurement and construction services provider, CH2M will focus on delivering projects for Shell's operating sites and business units. This collaboration will allow Shell's business units to access CH2M's global technical and management expertise.

"We share Shell's commitment to KPI-driven performance measurement and incentives, and to innovation that will migrate the capital project life-cycle to a fully data-driven environment. These ways of working are inherent in our values, and our collective ideas and commitment can improve capital efficiency across Shell's asset base," said Sheila Galegher, Vice President and CH2M's Global Account Manager for Shell. "We are ready to be the change agent Shell needs to deliver on their goals."

As MRC wrote before, in March 2016, Shell and Saudi Aramco announced plans to break up Motiva Enterprises LLC and divide up the assets, almost two decades after forming the US oil refining and marketing joint venture.

Royal Dutch Shell plc is an Anglo-Dutch multinational oil and gas company headquartered in The Hague, Netherlands and with its registered office in London, United Kingdom. It is the biggest company in the world in terms of revenue and one of the six oil and gas "supermajors". Shell is vertically integrated and is active in every area of the oil and gas industry, including exploration and production, refining, distribution and marketing, petrochemicals, power generation and trading.
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- At least eight people were injured on Wednesday by explosion at a Pemex fuel storage and distribution facility near the state-owned oil company's Salamanca refinery, in the central Mexican state of Guanajuato, said Reuters, citing Pemex.

The company said there were no deaths or "severe damages" at the facility, which supplies gasoline to regional buyers. It added that the fire has been extinguished.

The blast occurred as workers were filling a tanker truck with fuel in a part of the plant away from storage facilities, Pemex said in a statement.

As MRC informed earlier, Pemex is investing almost USD5.5bn in upgrading its refineries, increasing pipeline capacity and modernising a fertiliser plant.

Pemex, Mexican Petroleum, is a Mexican state-owned petroleum company. Pemex has a total asset worth of USD415.75 billion, and is the world's second largest non-publicly listed company by total market value, and Latin America's second largest enterprise by annual revenue as of 2009. Company produces such polymers, as polyethylene (PE), polypropylene (PP), polystyrene (PS).
MRC