Stockmeier Buys Indukerns Industrial Chemicals

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Germany’s Stockmeier Group has acquired the industrial chemicals division of Spanish distributor Indukern as of Mar. 1 for an undisclosed amount, said Chemanager-online.

The business has been taken over by newly founded division Stockmeier Quimica. Indukern belonged both to the Barcelona-based Indukern Group and the Diaz-Varela family. The industrial chemicals business, which was one of five divisions, has sales of €50 million and 70 employees.

Daniel Diaz-Varela, Indukern’s managing director, said the company decided to sell the industrial chemicals business as it longer considered it to be a strategic part of the company and it did not have enough synergies with the other divisions.

Maintaining this division and not developing all its potential would have been a mistake, he said. “Our goal is to focus in another priority areas, as flavors & fragrances or food ingredients for example, which have grown most lately."

Stockmeier will take over Indukern’s warehouses in Barcelona and Valencia, continuing to run them as transshipment points for inorganic and organic products and specialty chemicals.

"We want to be among the top three chemical distributors in Europe. With this acquisition we have taken another big step in this direction," said Matthias Mirbach, managing director of Stockmeier Holding. "We will now further expand our business in Spain and exploit the synergies between our various companies in Europe."

In June 2018, Stockmeier was ranked thirteenth globally and sixth in Europe, with 2017 sales of EUR1.03 billion. On Jan. 1, 2017, the company acquired a stake in Austria’s HDS-Chemie, boosting its business in Central and Eastern Europe. It also recently opened a new sales office in Hungary.
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- More efficient fuels and more sophisticated combustion engines are needed to bring down carbon dioxide pollution and to secure the long-term future of Saudi Aramco's business, reported Reuters with reference to the company's chief technology officer.

"The growth of transport is greater than the growth of alternative drivetrains," Ahmad Al Khowaiter, Chief Technology Officer at Saudi Aramco told journalists at the Geneva car show.

The spike in electric car production in Europe will not offset an overall increase in global greenhouse gas emissions as emerging economies industrialize and buy cars with petrol and diesel engines, Al Khowaiter said.

"Improving combustion engines is key to sustaining our business in the long term," he said.

While carmakers have rolled out advances in combustion engine technology, the availability of sophisticated fuels has not kept pace, Al Khowaiter said.

Diesel became an industry standard more than 100 years ago and has remained popular mainly because it did not evaporate quickly, making it safer to handle during storage and refueling.

"Rudolf Diesel did not consider fuels which evaporated easily. That was an accident of history," Al Khowaiter said, referring to the German founder of the diesel engine technology.

But diesel has proven a key cause of health-threatening nitrogen oxide pollution, which is blamed for respiratory diseases, forcing the industry to explore ways to cut emissions.

"We can now optimize the fuel and the engine at the same time. And we can bring it to market by adding another fuel pump at the gas station, just like it is done with higher octane fuels," Al Khowaiter said.

"We do the patents on the fuel development to enable the engines to be efficient," the executive said.

Saudi Aramco is working on gasoline compression ignition which mixes fuel and air more effectively prior to combustion, resulting in lower nitrogen oxide and soot emissions and a 30 percent improvement in fuel economy.

The petrochemicals giant is also helping to develop mobile carbon capture technologies which could be built into next generation passenger cars for around USD1,400 per vehicle, and help to cut carbon dioxide emissions.

As MRC informed previously, in October 2018, Saudi Aramco signed an agreement to invest in a refinery-petrochemical project in eastern China, part of its strategy to expand in downstream operations globally. The memorandum of understanding between the company and Zhejiang province included plans to invest in a new refinery and co-operate in crude oil supply, storage and trading, according to details released by the Zhoushan government after a signing ceremony in the city south of Shanghai.

Saudi Aramco, officially the Saudi Arabian Oil Company, is a Saudi Arabian national oil and natural gas company based in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia. Saudi Aramco"s value has been estimated at up to USD10 trillion in the Financial Times, making it the world"s most valuable company. Saudi Aramco has both the largest proven crude oil reserves, at more than 260 billion barrels, and largest daily oil production.
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Japan's Idemitsu Kosan is in plans shut its naphtha cracker for a maintenance turnaround, according to Apic-online.

A Polymerupdate source in Japan informed that the cracker is expected to be taken off-line for maintenance on April 9, 2019. The shutdown is likely to remain in force until end-May 2019.

Located at Chiba in Japan, the cracker has an ethylene production capacity of 410,000 mt/year.

As MRC wrote previously, Idemitsu Kosan shut its naphtha cracker for a maintenance turnaround in Chiba from September 20, 2017, to end-October 2017.

Idemitsu Kosan is a Japanese petroleum company. It owns and operates oil platforms, refineries and produces and sells petroleum, oils and petrochemical products. The company runs two petrochemical plants in Chiba and Tokuyama. The two naphtha crackers can produce up to 997,000 tonnes of ethylene per year.
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Nexeo Univar Inc., has announced that it has completed the acquisition of Nexeo Solutions, creating a leading global chemical and ingredients solutions provider, as per Plastics-Technology.

The combined company will conduct business as Univar Solutions, reflecting a commitment to combining the 'best of the best' from each legacy organization.

"Univar Solutions is uniquely positioned to drive growth and deliver significant value for shareholders, customers, suppliers and employees," said David Jukes, Univar Solutions president and chief executive officer. "Together, we have the ability to redefine chemical and ingredients distribution, to deliver superior growth for our partners, people and shareholders."

As MRC informed earlier, Nexeo Solutions, Inc. and The Surface Treatment global business unit of the Coatings division of BASF, operating under the Chemetall brand announced the expanded distribution relationship to include Chemetall’s surface treatment portfolio developed for the aerospace industry in the United States.

Chemetall, a leading global one-stop supplier for Aerospace OEMs and maintenance companies, with its well-known line of products including Ardrox and Naftoseal brands, offers sealants, non-destructive testing (NDT) products, corrosion inhibitors, cleaners, pretreatments and paint strippers for airframe, aircraft operation and aero-engine applications.
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Ineos has selected its Hull, Saltend, UK, site as the location for its long planned 300,000 t/y vinyl acetate monomer (VAM) plant, which will cost GBP150 million and form part of a just announced GDP1 billion investment in its British asset base, said Chemanager-online.

Within the investment package, the Swiss-headquartered group’s largest single project will be a GBP500 million upgrade of the 500-km Forties Pipeline System it acquired from BP in 2017. The four decades old pipeline system carries around 40% of the UK’s oil production and eventually supplies the Petroineos refinery at Grangemouth, Scotland, in which PetroChina holds a 49.9% stake.

The aging facility has been in need of repair for some time. Shortly after Ineos bought it, a crack was discovered, forcing a three-week shutdown. Also for some time, Ineos has been planning to modernize energy supply at Grangemouth. The already begun investment in a new steam and power plant is expected to swallow GBP350 million in funding.

The power plant being built by US engineering contractor Fluor will replace an existing power station, which is also 40 years old. High pressure steam produced in the new plant will be used by production facilities at the Scottish site, Fluor said.

The industry association Oil & Gas UK called the Ineos investment plan “a vote of confidence” in UK industry. Since announcing the VAM project in spring 2018, Ineos has been playing a guessing game about where its plant would be built, following months of silence on whether a new plant would be built at all. In 2013, the group shuttered an existing plant at Hull, also acquired from BP, saying its high production costs made it was uncompetitive.

Ineos had suggested that the VAM plant could be built either at Hull or Antwerp – it has ethylene hubs at both locations. Director Tom Crotty said in July last year that construction would be financed from its own cash flow, but acknowledged talks with the UK Department Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy about investment aid.

“Any help would tilt the scales in favor of Hull,” Crotty was quoted as saying said at an industry forum on Brexit.This week’s announcement of the UK investment scheme was seen by some as an attempt to smooth the waters after the flap over plans by Ineos chaiman Jim Ratcliffe and the privately owned group’s two other shareholders to move their domicile to Monaco to save tax.

Ineos executives commenting on the new plans stressed that the group believes in the future of manufacturing at an “uncertain moment” in the country’s industrial life.
MRC