Mitsui resumed production at its naphtha cracker in Japan

MOSCOW (MRC) -- After being shut down since early May, Japan's Mitsui Chemicals had restart its Ichihara naphtha cracker by May 12, reported Reuters.

The unexpected shutdown of the firm's 612,000 tonnes per year (tpy) cracker came as several other crackers in Japan and South Korea were either undergoing or about to start scheduled maintenance.

These include Hanwha Total Petrochemical's 1 million tpy cracker, which has been shut since April and is not expected to resume operations until June.

Asia's naphtha market has been persistently weak due to ample supplies.

The Asian naphtha crack for instance at USD37.60 a tonne on Wednesday was the lowest since Feb. 14 this year.

As MRC informed previously, Mitsui Chemicals took its naphtha-fed steam cracker in Sakai off-stream for a maintenance turnaround in mid-June 2018. It remained under maintenance until end-July 2018. Located in Sakai, Japan, the cracker has an ethylene production capacity of 500,000 mt/year and propylene production capacity of 280,000 mt/year.

Mitsui Chemicals is a leading manufacturer and supplier of value added specialty chemicals, plastics and materials for the automotive, healthcare, packaging, agricultural, building, and semiconductor and electronics markets. Mitsui Chemicals is a Japanese Chemicals company, a part of the Mitsui conglomerate. The company has a turnover of around 15 billion USD and has business interests in Japan, Europe, China, Southeast Asia and the USA. The company mainly deals in performance materials, petro and basic chemicals and functional polymeric materials.
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Evonik is reorganizing its business for high-performance polymers within the polyamide group, according to the company's press release.

The specialty chemicals company has already begun construction of a new polyamide 12 (PA 12) facility complex and is expanding its production of transparent polyamides at the Marl Chemical Park, and, in so doing, is concentrating its activities on high-performance materials for attractive growth markets such as the automotive, oil and gas, 3D printing, and optics industries. As part of the reorganization process, Evonik will withdraw entirely from the polyphthalamide (PPA) business at the Witten site.

"Reorganizing our polyamide business will concentrate our production and innovative strengths on specialty materials for promising applications in attractive markets such as lightweight construction, additive manufacturing, and composites. This, in turn, will give us a solid foundation for continuous growth," says Dr. Ralf Dussel, the head of the High Performance Polymers Business Line at Evonik. "For our customers, the move will mean a more intense focus on developing sophisticated specialty solutions."

Evonik’s roughly EUR400 million investment in Germany will increase the company’s overall capacity for PA 12 by over 50 percent. The project will complement existing PA 12 production at the Marl Chemical Park in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia with additional plants for the polymer and its precursors. The facility complex is scheduled to go on stream in the first half of 2021.

At the same time, Evonik will also be expanding production of transparent polyamides in Marl. Production expansion is slated for completion in the first quarter of 2020. The change will double the specialty chemicals company’s overall capacity for the high-performance material.

In another step in the process of reorganizing its polyamide business, Evonik will be discontinuing the production and sale of polyphthalamide at its Witten site by the end of the first quarter of 2020. Evonik will transfer employees from the PPA plant to its Marl site, where they will work at the new PA 12 production plant.

"As we focus our marketing activities on high-performance polymers, we will be utilizing internal synergies to accommodate our long-serving Witten employees with secure jobs at the new polyamide 12 production facility in Marl, where we will be able to draw upon their decades of proven experience in polymer production and compounding," says Dr. Iordanis Savvopoulos, Head of the Product Line Granules & Compounds at Evonik.

Evonik currently employs almost 300 people in Witten. The specialty chemicals company operates several production facilities for the production of organic substances on the approximately 16-hectare site which is one of the major production sites of raw materials for the paints, coatings and adhesives industry. In 2018, the group’s new production plant for specialty copolyesters at the Witten site went on stream.

Biobased polymers from the Terra series remain in the business portfolio and will continue to complement Evonik’s now reorganized range of high-performance polymers.

Evonik has over 50 years of experience in developing and manufacturing high-performance plastics. The company’s comprehensive product portfolio encompasses solutions for virtually any industrial application.

We remind that, as MRC informed earlier, in June 2018, the technology company The Linde Group and the specialty chemicals company Evonik Industries concluded an exclusive cooperation agreement on the use of membranes for natural gas processing. The two companies will jointly promote membrane technology - Evonik on the membrane and polymer side and Linde’s Engineering Division as the system integrator for the complete membrane package units. Evonik’s established membrane technology will serve as the basis.

Evonik, the creative industrial group from Germany, is one of the world leaders in specialty chemicals. Its activities focus on the key megatrends health, nutrition, resource efficiency and globalization. Evonik benefits specifically from its innovative prowess and integrated technology platforms. Evonik is active in over 100 countries around the world.
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- India's Chennai Petroleum Corp said it would shut a diesel hydrotreater at its 210,000 barrel-per-day Manali refinery in Tamil Nadu for about 60 days from August, for a revamp to produce Euro-VI compliant diesel, said Reuters.

The company is also installing a gasoline desulfurizer to reduce sulfur content in the gasoline produced from fluidized catalytic cracker, the company said in an email.

"These facilities are targeted for completion by Sept. 19 and commissioning by end-Dec," the company said.

India will fully migrate to Euro-VI compliant fuels from April 2020.

The gasoline desulfurizer will have an annual capacity of 0.6 million tonnes, while the capacity of diesel hydrotreater will be raised to 2.4 million tons a year from 1.8 million tons a year.
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Royal DSM, a global science-based company in Nutrition, Health and Sustainable Living, announces that it has reached agreement with SRF Ltd., to acquire its Engineering Plastics business, a leading player in India in the development, production and sale of specialty materials, said the company.

The acquisition is expected to close in Q3 2019, subject to customary closing conditions. The acquisition will further cement DSM Material’s’ position in India as the leading player in among others engineering plastics in this fast-growing economy and fits with its strategic aim of generating leading positions in fast-growing economies. SRF’s Engineering Plastics business, founded in 1979, with its main operations located in Pantnagar (India), realized sales of about USD 37 million in 2018 and has seen double-digit growth in recent years.

The company’s customers are well-known brands in the Automotive and Electrical & Electronics industries in India. Its business is highly complementary to DSM’s business in India and will allow DSM to further grow its business without having to significantly invest in capital expenditures. With strong anticipated market growth in the coming years, fueled by increasing domestic demand from a growing middle class and weight reduction/metal replacement in automotive, this acquisition will help DSM to meet the current and future needs of its customers in India and saves DSM a capacity investment required for further growth in India.

In 2018, DSM’s total sales in India, realized with about 550 employees, amounted to about €250 million, an increase of 17% compared to 2017. DSM is active in both Nutrition and Materials in the country. DSM Engineering Plastics operates a compounding facility and an R&T center in Pune.
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Clariant, a focused and innovative specialty chemical company, today announced it has completed ISO 22000 certification for its sites at Sant Andreu de la Barca (Barcelona), Spain, and Tangerang, Indonesia, recently, said the company.

Together with the Indonesian site and the former certified site in Singapore, Sant Andreu de la Barca is the third global site, and the first in Europe, to have completed the certification.

Certification strengthens Clariant’s global capabilities and leadership position as a supplier of high-quality, high-performance color and additive masterbatches for the food industry. Applications supported by the Spanish site include plastics caps and closures, food tabs and bottles, as well as film and sheet. In recent years, regulators have determined that packaging that comes in direct contact with food products must be considered a food ingredient and must meet the same standards for safety. Since Clariant’s color and additive concentrates are used in making plastics packaging, achieving ISO 22000 status for its manufacturing plants simplies the certification process for its customers and their clients.

"Our objective was to build on Clariant’s long-standing collaboration with current customers and expand the business related to food contact applications," says Alessandro Dulli, Global Head of Segment and BD Packaging. “We now can readily support food producers who are already using a similar standard, or plastics converters who want to make sure that the entire value chain applies comparable procedures to the ones they are using in their production lines."

ISO 22000 is a family of international standards that addresses food-safety management and lists measures that an organization needs to put in place to control eventual food safety hazards. These regulations are more stringent than earlier standards governing simple food contact. The need for such a standard is driven by an increased level of awareness of consumers towards food safety.

The certification process, which was overseen by SQS, a qualified Swiss provider of international certifications and audit systems,took roughly one full year and will undergo constant annual review. It represents a further step over HACCP (Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point) qualification that San Andreu achieved a few years ago.
MRC