Vinmar Polymers expands into Canada

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Houston, Tex.-based polymer reseller and distributor Vinmar Polymers America (VPA) has named a new commercial director for Canada, as per Canplastics.

The firm has appointed industry veteran Daniel Peretz to the role.

"Daniel will provide leadership to all commercial activities and implement our new platform in Canada," said VPA president Kirt Dmytruk. “Daniel brings with him a wealth of experience, including 20 years in the plastics industry as a plant manager, account manager, territory manager, market manager, and regional sales manager."

Peretz’s role is to focus on establishing a Canadian presence for VPA, Dmytruk added, and to roll out a sales support team to handle the Canadian market.

VPA was founded in August 2018 as a unit of Houston-based petrochemical marketing company Vinmar International.
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Hard-left French trade union CGT said on Friday it will call on its members to shut down operations at three of Total SA’s refineries in France on Monday afternoon if a final proposal to negotiate bonuses is rejected by management, said Hydrocarbonprocessing.

Oil industry workers were on strike for a third day on Friday at four of France’s seven refineries and unions urged employees to step up blockades to force the plants to halt production.

CGT spokesman Thierry Defresne said the union will make a final proposal to negotiate bonuses with Total’s management on Saturday. “If our proposal is rejected, we will propose to striking workers the shutdown of Grandpuits, Normandy and Feyzin petrol production units at midday on Monday,” Defresne said.

He added that workers at two major oil depots extended the strike at their sites on Friday evening until Monday afternoon.

Support for continued action on Friday came after unions rejected on Thursday a 1.5 percent salary increase offer by oil industry federation UFIP, saying it was below the French inflation rate. A spokesman for UFIP said talks to resolve the dispute had ended late on Thursday without agreement.

The CGT and fellow hard-left union FO have called on striking workers to step up blockades of refineries and fuel depots so companies are faced with supply shortages.

Defresne told Reuters earlier on Friday that Total’s Grandpuits refinery south of Paris, one of the refineries where workers remain on strike, was completely blocked and had only enough crude to continue functioning until Sunday midday.

He said later on Friday that the union had allowed crude deliveries at Grandpuits and Normandy refineries to keep them running at reduced output until Monday.But a Total spokeswoman said France’s CIM oil storage and dispatch services company, which supplies crude to refineries operated by Total and Exxon Mobil Corp, was working normally.

“Total denies the fact that the Grandpuits refinery will run out of crude, forcing a shutdown,” she said, although she said outbound deliveries of fuel from Grandpuits were blocked.

Some CIM employees staged a brief walkout on Thursday in solidarity with the striking refinery workers but they resumed work later in the day. The strike over pay and bonuses adds to challenges confronting fuel companies, which are also facing protests from the “yellow vest” movement of citizens who oppose higher fuel taxes and have sporadically blockaded oil depots this week.
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Singapore Prime Evolue is likely to shut its metallocene linear low density polyethylene (mLLDPE) plant for maintenance, as per Apic-online.

A Polymerupdate source in Singapore informed that the company is expected to start maintenance at the plant in first week of January 2019. The plant is expected to remain off-line for around 45-50 days.

Located at Jurong Island of Singapore, the new mLLDPE plant has a production capacity of 300,000 mt/year.

Prime Evolue was established in 2012 for the sales and production of Mitsui Chemical’s Evolue LLDPE in Singapore. The venture, owned 80% by Prime Polymer and 20% by Mitsui, and with a capital of USD115-million, built a 300,000-t/y Evolue production unit, as MRC wrote previously. Initially, construction was scheduled for completion in December 2014, with commercial operations to start during the second quarter of 2015. Equipment problems at feedstock provider Royal Dutch Shell postponed the planned August 2015 opening of the plant for making advanced PE Evolue until H2 2016.
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Maire Tecnimont S.p.A. has announced that its subsidiary Tecnimont S.p.A., through its affiliate Tecnimont USA Inc., in consortium with Performance Contractors Inc., has been awarded a reimbursable contract by Exxon Mobil Corporation for the initial activities related to the front end engineering design, early execution studies and early procurement activities for new process units and the associated offsites and utilities for a Petrochemical complex in the US, as per Maire Tecnimont's press release.

The scope of the initial activities is worth about USD 230 million (out of which about USD190 million pertain to Tecnimont).

The final investment decision with respect to construction of the petrochemical complex is expected to be made in the first quarter of 2019.

Due to the reimbursable formula of remuneration for the contract, in accordance with the applicable international accounting standards, the impact on the backlog and revenues will be related to the value of the services rendered for the engineering and procurement activities, thus excluding the face value of equipment and materials.

Tecnimont is the leader of the consortium, due to its consolidated expertise in the petrochemical sector and its worldwide experience in the implementation of polyolefin plants. Performance Contractors is a seasoned US-based General Industrial Contractor in the chemical, petrochemical and other industrial sectors, with a strong track record in the US Gulf Coast area and a long history with Exxon Mobil.

With this contract, Maire Tecnimont Group consolidates its global leadership in the polyolefins market, and expands its geographical footprint in North America, an attractive and consolidated market where a number of gas-based industrial plants are expected to be tendered in the near future, thanks to the exploitation of shale gas.

Pierroberto Folgiero, Maire Tecnimont Chief Executive Officer, commented: "With this agreement we expand our presence in the US, the place to be for a technology-driven EPC contractor such as Maire Tecnimont. We are really honoured to serve Exxon Mobil, one of the world’s largest oil companies, in its long-term investment cycle in the US This result has been achieved through an innovative partnership with one of the major construction players in the North American market".

As MRC informed before, in October 2017, ExxonMobil Chemical Company commenced production on the first of two new 650,000 tons-per-year high-performance polyethylene (PE) lines at its plastics plant in Mont Belvieu, Texas. The full project, part of the company’s multi-billion dollar expansion project in the Baytown area and ExxonMobil’s broader Growing the Gulf expansion initiative, will increase the plant’s polyethylene capacity by approximately 1.3 million tons per year.

Maire Tecnimont S.p.A. is a company listed with the Milan stock exchange. It heads an industrial group that leads the international Engineering & Construction (E&C), Technology & Licensing and Energy Business Development & Ventures markets, with specific competences in plants, particularly in the hydrocarbons segment (Oil & Gas, Petrochemicals and Fertilisers), as well as in Power Generation and Infrastructures. The Maire Tecnimont Group operates in approximately 40 different countries, numbering around 50 operative companies and a workforce of about 5,500 employees, along with approximately 3,000 additional Electrical & Instrumentation professionals.

ExxonMobil is the largest non-government owned company in the energy industry and produces about 3% of the world's oil and about 2% of the world's energy.
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Zimbabwe is planning to build a base metals and precious metals refinery that will process platinum from all the country’s platinum mines, a budget statement said, as per Hydrocarbonprocessing.

The country, which is home to the second largest known deposits of platinum after South Africa, will impose a 5 percent tax on export of platinum concentrates in 2019 in a bid to encourage local processing of the metal.

Without giving details, the budget statement said Impala Platinum’s local unit Zimplats had shelved its USD131 million project to refurbish a base metals refinery to pave way for the national project.

It was not clear who would be behind the new project or its shareholders. Zimplats chief executive Alex Mhembere did not immediately respond to calls to his mobile phone.

Implats and Anglo American Platinum have operations in Zimbabwe, while Sibanye-Stillwater also has a joint venture mine with Implats in the country.

Privately-owned Karo Resources has previously said it was planning USD4.2 billion platinum mining project, including a precious metals refinery in Zimbabwe. A Russian consortium and Zimbabwean investors is developing a platinum project in Darwendale near Harare.

The project had stalled under former president Robert Mugabe, who resigned after a coup last year, but was revived when Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov visited Zimbabwe in March.
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