Avery Dennison recycled PET liners now available across Europe in four constructions

MOSCOW (MRC) -- The recent launch, by Avery Dennison, of a portfolio using recycled PET (rPET) liners has received another important boost, with four labelling constructions now available across Europe, as per the company's press release.

Georg Muller-Hof, vice president marketing LPM Europe, said that using post-consumer waste (PCW) to manufacture label liners represents a step change in sustainability: "Avery Dennison is focused on real-world sustainability improvements, which ultimately means ‘closing the loop’ and using post-consumer waste to create new products. These four new labelling materials not only use a liner with more than 30% recycled PET bottle content, but they are also part of our CleanFlake and ClearCut portfolios - which offer important additional sustainability gains in their own right."

Three CleanFlake materials are now available on a thin rPET23 liner. The 'switchable' CleanFlake adhesive is designed to separate cleanly from PET bottles during the recycling process so that contamination of PET flakes is avoided - an important factor in ensuring that recycled PET can be recycled rather than downcycled. A fourth material - a high clarity ClearCut PP50 TOP CLEAR-S7000-rPET23 construction - is considerably thinner than today’s market reference (PP60 with PET30), and offers high speed conversion and dispensing using the same thin rPET23 liner.

The rPET liner has been designed to convert in the same way as a conventional PET liner, with no noticeable differences in performance.

Muller-Hof said that more will follow: "We are committed to managing waste across the value chain - in line with our 2025 Sustainability Goals and to meet the needs of our customers. Moving forward, we look forward to introducing rPET liner in an expanded range of products, as well as offering products that contain recycled content and/or enable recycling of end use packaging."

As MRC wrote earlier, in December 2016, Avery Dennison Corporation announced it had agreed to acquire Hanita Coatings, a pressure-sensitive materials manufacturer of specialty films and laminates from Kibbutz Hanita Coatings and Tene Investment Funds for the purchase price of USD75 million. Headquartered in Israel with sales and distribution facilities in the United States, Germany, China and Australia, Hanita Coatings develops and manufactures coated, laminated, and metallized polyester films for a range of industrial and commercial applications, all of which require high performance and superior quality.

Headquartered in Glendale, California, Avery Dennison is a global leader in labeling and packaging materials and solutions. The company’s applications and technologies are an integral part of products used in every major market and industry. With operations in more than 50 countries and more than 25,000 employees worldwide, Avery Dennison serves customers with insights and innovations that help make brands more inspiring and the world more intelligent.
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Waste management company Biffa has received planning approval from Durham County Council to build a new GBP15-million plastic recycling facility near the town of Seaham, as per RESOURCE.

Biffa will be making use of a 130,000 square foot vacant warehouse at Foxcover Distribution Park, where the company intends to install a polymer processing plant capable of recycling more than one billion plastic bottles every year.

The proposed facility will be in operation 24/7 and will process three million bottles a day into new food and drink packaging, bringing around 70 new full-time jobs to the area. Construction is expected to commence in summer 2019, with the first commissioning trials scheduled for December.

Biffa’s new site represents its latest investment in UK-based recycling infrastructure and will double the company’s plastic bottle recycling capacity. Currently, its flagship Redcar plant processes around 18,000 tonnes of recycled high density polyethylene (rHDPE) every year, turning it into milk bottles and food trays.

Mick Davis, managing director of resource, recovery and treatment at Biffa, said: "The UK currently uses around 13.5 billion plastic bottles a year but can only process half of this, with the rest diverted to landfill or overseas. This new site represents an exciting opportunity to boost our recycling capacity here at home and supports the country’s long-term plan to find new ways to reuse plastics, as detailed in Defra’s recent Resources and Waste Strategy.

"Our proposals for the Seaham plant were the result of months of careful consideration and we are keen to build on our already excellent reputation for recycling in the north east. We are delighted Durham County Council recognised the importance of this site to the region, as well as the wider waste industry, and we now look forward to seeing these plans come to life."
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- PetroChina Co plans to drop Petroleos de Venezuela SA (PDVSA) as a partner in a planned USD10 billion oil refinery and petrochemical project in southern China, reported Reuters with reference to three sources familiar with the matter.

The company’s decision adds to state-owned PDVSA’s woes after the United States imposed sanctions on the company on Jan. 28 to undermine the rule of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.

However, dropping the company was not a reaction to the U.S. sanctions but follows the deteriorating financial status of PDVSA over the past few years, said two of the sources, both executives with China National Petroleum Corp, the parent of PetroChina.

"There will be no role of PDVSA as an equity partner. At least we don’t see that possibility in the near future given the situation the country has been through in recent years," said one of the executives, asking to remain unidentified because he is not authorized to speak to the media.

The move illustrates the fading relationship between Venezuela and China, which has given USD50 billion to the South American country in the form of loans-for-oil agreements. China, the world’s largest oil importer, is now the second-biggest buyer of Venezuelan crude in Asia, taking in 16.63 million tonnes, or about 332,000 barrels per day (bpd), in 2018.

That relationship began to fray in 2015 when Venezuela requested a change in the payment terms on the debt to ease the impact of its falling crude output and declining oil prices. Instead of handing out large fresh loans, Beijing has shifted to small investments or granting extensions in the grace periods for the outstanding loans.

The sanctions were imposed at the same time the United States and other nations have backed opposition leader Juan Guaido as legitimate ruler instead of President Nicolas Maduro. During Maduro’s rule, oil production has plunged while millions have left amid hyperinflation and as consumer goods have vanished from market shelves.

PDVSA was originally a 40 percent equity partner in the refinery project, located the city of Jieyang in the southern province of Guangdong. PetroChina and PDVSA received environmental approval for the project in 2011.

Initial plans were for the refinery to process 400,000 bpd of strictly Venezuelan crude oil. The plans have now been expanded to focus on petrochemical production including a 1.2-million-tonnes-per-year ethylene plant and a 2.6-million tpy aromatics plant. The plant is expected to be operational by late 2021, Caixin reported on Dec. 5.

Under the revised plan, the refinery will not be restricted to Venezuelan oil but could process other so-called heavy crude grades that could come from Middle Eastern producers such as Saudi Arabia and Iran, said the third official, a PetroChina trading executive.

An e-mail response from PetroChina’s public relations company Hill+Knowlton Strategies only stated "China-Venezuela Guangdong Petrochemical Co Ltd is a joint venture company approved by the state," referring to the formal name for the company set up by Petrochina and PDVSA to develop the refinery.

PDVSA and the Venezuelan Ministry of Petroleum did not respond to a request for comment from Reuters.

As MRC informed earlier, in January 2018, PetroChina nearly doubled the amount of Russian crude being processed at its refinery in Dalian, the company’s biggest, since January, as a new supply agreement had come into effect. PetroChina has designated three refineries in northeast China - Dalian, Liaoyang and Jilin - as the main receiving points for the increased Russian supply. Liaoyang will begin taking more crude once a major upgrade is completed at the end of last year - beginning of this year. The new volumes will flow as a result of Russia and China expanding the East Siberian Pacific Ocean pipeline that starts at Rosneft’s oilfields in East Siberia and enters China at border town of Mohe.
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Neste Corporation Press Release (EET) The Parliament of Finland has voted in favor of a law for gradually increasing the share of biofuels in road traffic to 30% by 2029, said Hydrocarbonprocessing.

In addition, the Parliament has approved a law for the distribution obligation of bio-based light fuel oil. According to the new law, a share of light fuel oil intended for heating, construction machines and fitted motors will be replaced by bio-based fuel oil starting in 2021.

“Neste shares the Finnish Government’s view that we need a large amount of sustainably produced biofuels in order to reduce climate emissions fast and sufficiently enough in the next decade. We need multiple solutions for reducing emissions: energy efficiency, better traffic planning, more public transportation as well as new technologies such as electric and gas-powered vehicles,” says Ilkka Rasanen, Director, Public Affairs at Neste.

“The advantage of liquid biofuels is that they are already available on a large scale today. Biofuels produced from waste and residues, such as Neste MY Renewable Diesel, reduce greenhouse gas emissions by up to 90% in comparison to fossil fuels. Liquid biofuels are fully compatible with the existing infrastructure so they can be used in the existing car pool” Rasanen continues.

The new law is an important step towards lower-emission transport to which Neste as a company is fully committed. The obligation is well aligned with the targets already set in Sweden and Norway and it brings Finland to the same ambitious level with its Western neighbours.
mrcplsat.com

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Bentley Systems announced the availability of OpenUtilities™ DER Planning & Design Assessment Solutions, the latest of Bentley’s electric utility software offerings that provide decision support and cost-based models and simulations for Distributed Energy Resources (DER) integration, as per Hydrocarbonprocessing.

In partnership with Siemens’ Digital Grid business unit, OpenUtilities Solutions for DER empowers electric utilities, electricity suppliers, and distribution network operators (DSO) with software applications to analyze, design, and evaluate DER interconnection requests through desktop and cloud-based services, while supporting the reliability and resilience of network operations. OpenUtilities Solutions for DER create automatic network analysis models for Siemens’ PSS®SINCAL with the integration of GIS-based network data (including ESRI, GE, and Smallworld).

The solutions generate an electrical digital twin for utilities – a GIS digital twin that enables owner/operators to more efficiently model the grid for decentralized energy without compromising safety and reliability. Some of the major challenges utilities encounter with DER integration are system complexity, increased regulatory requirements, high customer demand, and cost management. Digital twins can provide huge efficiencies in grid operations by streamlining DER interconnection applications with optimized workflows to better assess operational impacts, long-term strategic scenarios and investment decisions.

With the increasing penetration of DER into the grid, utilities need digital applications to handle the increasing demand for DER interconnections and collaborate across work groups. OpenUtilities DER Optioneering offers a cloud-based decision support initial screening and supplemental screening mechanism to evaluate DER interconnection requests using validation checkpoints and hosting capacity analysis. Utilities can benefit from this fast-track interconnection procedure to readily approve DER applications or to defer them to power systems planners to conduct further studies and impact analysis. The application provides a practical and cost-effective method to streamline and automate the DER approval process without always having to involve costly engineering resources and expedite the interconnection request process. It enables non-engineering staff and managers alike to effectively manage DER interconnection applications while adhering to complex regulatory requirements for DER permits.
MRC