Mitsubishi Chemical to acquire German semiconductor-related service company Cleanpart Group

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Mitsubishi Chemical Corporation has announced, it has reached an agreement with a German investment fund, Deutsche Beteiligungs AG to acquire shares of Cleanpart Group GmbH, which has developed semiconductor-related services in Europe and the US, as per PublicNow.

All the shares are planned to be turned over by Service Investment S. ar. L, a subsidiary of Deutsche Beteiligungs AG that holds shares of Cleanpart, in October of this year.

Cleanpart provides semiconductor makers in Europe and the US with precision cleaning and coating services for semiconductor manufacturing equipment, and is one of the leading providers in this field in Europe. Its technological capabilities have also helped Cleanpart establish market-leading position in the US market. MCC's subsidiary Shinryo Corporation has developed the similar business, mainly in Japan and other Asian markets.

Growth in the semiconductor market has continued to soar in recent years along with the explosion in data processing volume due to the expansion of information technology such as AI and IoT, and is expected to remain on a path toward favorable growth. The Mitsubishi Chemical Holdings Group has designated 'IT, electronics, and displays' as one of the focus markets in its medium-term management plan APTSIS 20, and is enhancing fields such as cleaning materials, precision cleaning services and specialty gases for semiconductors in its semiconductor-related business. Cleanpart and Shinryo have a complementary relationship from a geographical standpoint.

The acquisition allows MCC to offer its precision cleaning and coating services on a global scale. Furthermore, MCC will enhance the Group's semiconductor-related business by strengthening access to the semiconductor industry using Cleanpart's market presence and networks in Europe and the US and boosting its capabilities to propose solutions that meet customers' needs and help them develop more advanced technology.

As MRC wrote earlier, in December 2017, Ube Industries, JSR Corp. and MCC received European Commission (EC) approval for the planned integration of their acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS) subsidiaries.

Mitsubishi Chemical with headquarters in Tokyo, Japan, is a diversified chemical company involved in petrochemicals, polymers, agrochemicals, speciality chemicals and pharmaceuticals. The company's main focus is on three business pillars: petrochemicals, performance and functional products, and health care.
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MOSCOW (MRC) -- Linde AG and Praxair Inc. have won conditional European Union approval for their USD45 billion merger, as they scramble to win over US antitrust authorities for a deal that combines two of the biggest suppliers of industrial gas, reported Bloomberg.

The European Commission said its competition concerns were addressed after the companies agreed to sell Praxair’s entire gas business in Europe as well as the Danbury, Connecticut-based company’s stake in an Italian joint venture and several helium sourcing contracts.

"Gases - like oxygen and helium - are crucial inputs for a large variety of products we need and use in our everyday life," EU Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager said in a statement Monday. "With this decision, we make sure that the merger of Praxair and Linde will not result in further concentration in Europe and that customers will continue to benefit from competition in these markets."

After the EU’s decision, Linde and Praxair still have one major hurdle in their quest for regulatory approvals. The companies were caught off guard earlier this month by a notice from the US Federal Trade Commission to sell more assets in order to gain antitrust approval even after they had agreed to roughly USD9 billion worth of disposals in Europe and North America.

The latest requests from US regulators are "more onerous than previously expected," Linde said earlier this month. It generates about 23 percent of its revenue in the country. Praxair and Linde representatives didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment Monday.

The Linde-Praxair pledge allows Taiyo Nippon Sanso Corp. to gain a foothold in Europe after merging companies agreed last month to sell several industrial-gas plants to the Japanese firm to answer EU concerns about reduced rivalry in the industrial-gases market. Linde is also considering the sale of additional assets in the U.S. that would mark a near-complete retreat from industrial gas operations in the country, people said earlier this month.

In addition to selling Praxair’s entire gas business in Europe, the companies pledged to transfer of Praxair’s stake in Italian joint venture SIAD to Praxair’s current joint venture partner Flow Fin SpA and to divest additional helium sourcing contracts, beyond those needed to satisfy demand in the European region, to one or more suitable buyers. Commission officials will assess the suitability of potential buyers for Praxair’s gas business and for the helium sourcing contracts.

The EU had concerns the deal would have cut the number of significant gas players down to three without the commitments its extracted. The commission said its investigation showed that only the four main players in the region - Praxair, Linde, Air Liquide SA of France and Air Products & Chemicals Inc. - currently have the capabilities to bid for the largest projects across Europe and access to the existing helium sources to be competitive.

As part of their agreement to combine, the companies set limits on the assets they would be willing to jettison in return for regulatory clearance. Under their deal, the units to be sold must have annual sales of less than 3.7 billion euros (USD4.2 billion) or income before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization of less than 1.1 billion euros.

As MRC informed previously, German industrial gases company Linde and peer Praxis are hoping to seal their merger this year, after agreeing to sell Praxair’s European gases business to Japanese rival Taiyo Nippon Sanso Corp.
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MOSCOW (MRC) -- LyondellBasell, one of the largest plastics, chemicals and refining companies in the world, has announced that it has declared a dividend of USD1.00 per share, as per the company's press release.

The announced dividend is to be paid September 12, 2018 to shareholders of record September 5, 2018, with an ex-dividend date of September 4, 2018.

As MRC wrote previously, in August 2016, LyondellBasell made the final investment decision to build a high density polyethylene (HDPE) plant on the US Gulf Coast. The plant will have an annual capacity of 1.1 billion pounds (500,000 metric tons) and will be the first commercial plant to employ LyondellBasell's new proprietary Hyperzone PE technology. The start-up of the new plant is scheduled for 2019.

LyondellBasell is one of the largest plastics, chemicals and refining companies in the world. Driven by its 13,000 employees around the globe, LyondellBasell produces materials and products that are key to advancing solutions to modern challenges like enhancing food safety through lightweight and flexible packaging, protecting the purity of water supplies through stronger and more versatile pipes, and improving the safety, comfort and fuel efficiency of many of the cars and trucks on the road. LyondellBasell sells products into approximately 100 countries and is the world's largest licensor of polyolefin technologies.
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MOSCOW (MRC) -- BP Plc’s Whiting, Indiana, refinery is running above its faceplate capacity of 413,500 barrels per day (bpd) after restarting a crude distillation unit (CDU) over the weekend, reported Reuters with reference to sources familiar with the operations.

The 75 Mbpd Pipestill 11C CDU was taken out of production on Thursday, for minor repairs, the sources said.

The refinery is running at about 6 percent above its faceplate capacity, the sources said.

Refineries frequently run above their faceplate capacity, the level at which the refinery routinely operates, for periods of time throughout the year.

As MRC informed previously, in May 2018, hte - the high throughput experimentation company was selected by BP to evaluate commercial catalysts for both naphtha reforming and hydrocracking applications using high throughput technology under commercially relevant conditions for its refineries around the world.

BP is one of the world's leading international oil and gas companies, providing its customers with fuel for transportation, energy for heat and light, retail services and petrochemicals products for everyday items.
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MOSCOW (MRC) -- Ecuador has postponed planned maintenance on its 110,000 barrel-per-day Esmeraldas refinery due to a delay in the delivery of pipes that will be installed in several units, reported Reuters with reference to the oil ministry.

The outage had originally been scheduled to start in mid-August and last 54 days.

"The planned stoppage of the Esmeraldas refinery will be carried out in March 2019," the ministry said in a statement.

State oil company Petroecuador "will provide the appropriate technical support so that the units can continue operating under the current conditions until the new date," it added.

The maintenance will involve repairs to equipment on units including the fluid catalytic cracker as well as crude and vacuum units.

The Esmeraldas refinery has suffered operational problems despite undergoing a USD2.2 billion expansion project during the government of former President Rafael Correa.

A technical team from Petroecuador will travel to China to supervise construction of the pipes to avoid further delays, the ministry said.

President Lenin Moreno has ordered an audit of the refinery expansion and other oil sector projects to investigate possible acts of corruption.

We remind that, as MRC wrote earlier, in March 2018, Assam-based Numaligarh Refinery Limited (NRL) made an entry into the North American market, dispatching a consignment of 80 metric tonnes (MT) of wax to the United States. The company added that early this month a consignment of 64 MT of wax was exported to Portugal, the second European country after Poland where NRL Wax has been exported. This was followed by the export of 86 MT of wax to Ecuador.
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