Mercedes-Benz to pull Smart cars from Canada, U.S. market

MOSCOW (MRC) -- With sales falling, German automaker Daimler AG’s Mercedes-Benz business has announced that it will discontinue sales of its full-electric Smart brand in Canada and the U.S. at the end of the current model year, as per Canplastics.

Once touted as the next big thing in urban mobility, Canadian sales of Smart vehicles fell 6.3 per cent to just 345 units in 2018 after the car went fully electric. U.S. Smart sales in 2018 were 1,276, a drop of 58 per cent.

Daimler ended sales of gasoline-fuelled Smart cars in 2017.

The Smart brand’s electric cars offered 93 kms of driving range per charge. In contrast, competing models such as the “mid-range” Tesla Model 3 offered an estimated range of 523 kms per charge.

In its statement, Daimler’s Mercedes-Benz brand cited “a number of factors” for the decision to end Smart’s run in Canada and the U.S., including a declining micro-car market in the two countries, combined with the costs required to bring the European-designed Smart in line with North American regulations.

Mercedes dealers will still offer parts and repairs for Smart cars, the company said.

Daimler has said it will enter into a joint venture with Zhejiang Geely Holding Group to build a new generation of Smart models in a purpose-built electric-car factory in China with global sales to begin in 2022.

As MRC informed earlier, Daimler said it will spend EUR3 B (USD3.35 B) to curtail diesel exhaust pollution levels by modifying its engines and exhaust treatment systems, including a software update for some Mercedes-Benz passenger cars.

Daimler AG is a German multinational automotive corporation. Daimler AG is headquartered in Stuttgart, Baden-Wurttemberg, Germany. As of 2014, Daimler owns or has shares in a number of car, bus, truck and motorcycle brands including Mercedes-Benz, Mercedes-AMG, Smart Automobile, Freightliner, Western Star, Thomas Built Buses, Setra, BharatBenz, Mitsubishi Fuso, MV Agusta as well as shares in Denza, KAMAZ, Beijing Automotive Group, and Renault-Nissan Alliance. In 2015 Daimler sold 2.9 million vehicles. By unit sales, Daimler is the thirteenth-largest car manufacturer and second-largest truck manufacturer in the world.
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- SABIC has announced that the company is making significant investments in expanding the capacity of its ULTEM and EXTEM high heat resin production in order to meet growing demand, said Britishplastics.

The new production plant in Singapore is due to come on-stream in the first half of 2021, making SABIC the only high heat resin producer with manufacturing capability in all regions.

In addition to this, investments to stretch SABIC’s short term capacity were made to support the immediate growing demand.

Rudy Miller, Director of High Heat Business at SABIC, said: “Fundamentally, it is our ambition to support our customers and our customers’ growth. There is a growing demand for high heat polymers, driven by stringent requirements in an increasing number of applications that are exposed to challenging or tough environments.”
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Overall polypropylene (PP) imports to the Ukrainian market totalled about 45,000 tonnes in the first four months of 2019, up by 17% year on year. Propylene homopolymers (homopolymer PP) accounted for the main increase in imports, according to MRC's DataScope report.

April PP imports into Ukraine rose to 13,500 tonnes from 11,900 tonnes a month earlier, with homopolymer PP accounting for the main increase. Overall imports of propylene polymers reached 45,000 tonnes in January-April 2019, compared to 38,600 tonnes a year earlier. Homopolymer PP accounted for the main growth in imports, whereas demand for propylene copolymers subsided.

The structure of PP imports by grades looked the following way over the stated period.

April imports of homopolymer PP to the Ukrainian market rose to 11,300 tonnes from 9,700 tonnes a month earlier, local companies raised their purchasing of homopolymer PP raffia in Russia. Overall shipments of homopolymer PP reached 25,900 tonnes in the first four months of 2019 versus 27,600 tonnes a year earlier.

Last month's imports of block propylene copolymers (PP block copolymers) were 1,400 tonnes, compared to 800 tonnes in March. 4,300 tonnes of PP block copolymers were imported over the stated period, whereas last year's figure was 4,100 tonnes.

April imports of statistical copolymers of propylene (PP random copolymer) slumped to 700 tonnes from 1,300 tonnes a month earlier, local companies significantly reduced their purchasing of injection moulding PP random copolymer. Overall imports of PP random copolymers exceeded 4,200 tonnes in January-April 2019, whereas this figure was about 6,000 tonnes a year earlier.

Overall imports of other propylene copolymers were about 600 tonnes over the stated period.

MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- oil company Sonangol said it had awarded its refined products buy tender for the next 12 months to Total and Trafigura, said Hydrocarbonprocessing.

Total will supply Angola with gasoline while Trafigura will supply diesel and marine diesel.The results come on the back of some of the worst fuel shortages Angola has seen in years, which led to the sacking of Sonangol chair Carlos Saturnino earlier this month.

Sonangol, Angola’s largest and most influential company, blamed the shortage on difficulties accessing hard currency as well as unpaid debts owed to the energy company by industrial clients.

Heavily reliant on oil sales for government income, Angola was hit hard by the 2014 oil price crash, which pushed its economy into recession and created foreign currency shortages that crippled business.

In the statement on Tuesday, Sonangol said it had issued the tender in February with nine companies bidding for the supply contracts.

The tender result marks a return to Angola for Trafigura which for many years enjoyed an effective monopoly on lucrative fuel supply deals with OPEC member Angola.

Despite being Africa’s second-largest crude producer, Angola only has the refining capacity to supply about 20 percent of its fuel needs.

Links between Trafigura and Angola stretch beyond fuel imports, with Sonangol and Angolan company Cochan Holdings having the significant stakes in the trader’s global midstream and downstream business Puma Energy.

The choice to drop Trafigura last year was seen as a major statement at the time, as President Joao Lourenco vowed to reform Angola’s oil sector.

As MRC informed earlier, Italian company Eni said it had made a major oil discovery in Angola that would boost its credentials as one of the most successful foreign oil producers in Africa in recent years. The find is Angola's largest offshore discovery in years and may help Africa's second-biggest crude producer avoid a steep decline in output due to the ageing of its other fields.
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Saudi Basic Industries Corp (SABIC) has taken off-stream its SABIC Olefins 4 cracker owing to technical issues, as per Apic-online.

A Polymerupdate source in the Netherlands informed that the cracker has halted operations at the cracker on May 10, 2019. Further details on duration of the shutdown could not be ascertained.

Located in beek, the Netherlands, the cracker has an ethylene production capacity of 690,000 mt/year and a propylene production capacity of 360,000 mt/year.

As MRC reported earlier, in response to customer needs, in February 2018, Sabic announced projects in Asia and the Netherlands designed to increase global capacity for two of its high-performance engineering thermoplastic materials, Ultem and Noryl resins. The planned new production facility in Singapore is expected to go online in the first half of 2021. The company also plans to recommission operations at its Bergen op Zoom PPE resin plant in the Netherlands by the end of 2019 to produce polyphenylene ether (PPE), the base resin for its line of Noryl resins and oligomers.

Saudi Basic Industries Corporation (Sabic) ranks among the world's top petrochemical companies. The company is among the worldпїЅs market leaders in the production of polyethylene, polypropylene and other advanced thermoplastics, glycols, methanol and fertilizers.
MRC