Celanese raises August VAM prices in Americas

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Celanese Corporation, a global specialty materials company, has increased April list and off-list selling prices for Vinyl Acetate Monomer (VAM) sold in the Americas, as per the company's press release.

The price increases below were effective for orders shipped on or after 30 July, 2019, or as contracts otherwise allow, and are incremental to any previously announced increases.

Thus, VAM prices rose, as follows:

- by USD0.05/lb - for the USA and Canada;
- by USD100/mt - for Mexico & South America.

As MRC reported earlier, Celanese last raised its VAM prices for the Americas on 20 March, 2019, as stated below:

- by USD0.05/lb - for the USA and Canada;
- by USD110/mt - for Mexico & South America.

Celanese Corporation is a global technology leader in the production of differentiated chemistry solutions and specialty materials used in most major industries and consumer applications. Based in Dallas, Celanese employs approximately 7,700 employees worldwide and had 2018 net sales of USD7.2 billion.
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Sumitomo Chemical has agreed to license its propylene oxide (PO) production technology to leading state-owned Indian oil company Bharat Petroleum Corporation Limited (BPCL), said Plasticsnewseurope.

BPCL is currently conducting front-end engineering design and detailed engineering studies for the new PO and polyol plants adjacent to its refinery complex at Kochi, in the southern state of Kerala.

The PO production unit will have an annual capacity of 300 kilotonnes and is set for completion in 2022, Sumitomo announced 19 Aug.

Sumitomo Chemical's PO technology is based on a PO-only process in which, with cumene recycling, co-product free PO is manufactured.

The technology, combined with Sumitomo’s proprietary high-performance epoxidation catalyst, offers a high PO yield, superior energy efficiency and remarkable stability in plant operation, according to Sumitomo.

The technology has already been employed at Sumitomo Chemical's Chiba Works in Japan and Petro Rabigh in Saudi Arabia.

It was also licensed to S-OIL Corp. of South Korea for a new plant with a production capacity of 300 kilotonnes per annum (ktpa), which came on stream in 2018.

The Japanese company has also licensed the technology to PTT Global’s subsidiary in Thailand, which is currently building a 200ktpa plant set for completion in 2020.
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Belgian manufacturer of honeycomb structures EconCore has selected Meaf machinery for its trial production of recycled PET (rPET) ThermHex honeycomb sandwich panels, said Plasticsnewseurope.

The company is using the high speed, energy efficient Meaf 50-H34 extruder to produce the honeycomb core, which consists of 95% recycled post-consumer PET, Meaf announced 20 Aug.

EconCore’s thermoplastic honeycomb technology enables the production of honeycomb panels in a continuous and in-line integrated process. During the successive production steps polymers are extruded, vacuum formed and folded into a honeycomb core.

Further process integration has been achieved with the direct in-line lamination of skin layers onto the honeycomb cores, allowing for the one-shot production of sandwich panels or parts.

“We want to bring a smart, innovative and sustainable product to market that contributes towards the circular economy of plastics,” said Wouter Winant, technical manager at EconCore.

The rPET core offers high stiffness and strength in compression and shear, high temperature stability and has an excellent weight to cost ratio, according to Winant.

In addition, the Meaf 50-H34 flat die extruder offers a cost-effective and highly efficient production process, Winant said.

The Meaf H-series sheet extrusion lines are designed to have higher output at lower melt temperatures and RPM and reduce energy consumption by at least 50% compared to competitor brands in the market.

The extrusion lines are suited for both single and multi-layer extrusion applications and can produce up to eight layers, using a range of materials including PP, PS, HIPS, PET, PE, PA, PLA, TPE, EVOH barrier and others, according to Ardjan Houtekamer, technical director at Meaf.

The extrusion technology will also feature prominently on the Meaf stand at K2019, to be held 16-23 Oct, in Dusseldorf, Germany.
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Pengerang Refining and Petrochemical (PrefChem), a joint venture between Petronas and Saudi Aramco, has begun to restart a crude distillation unit (CDU) at its oil refinery in Malaysia, reported Reuters with reference to Petronas' statement.

Malaysia’s state oil firm said the refinery had started feeding crude oil into the unit earlier this week, confirming an earlier Reuters report citing sources.

"We confirm that the refinery has started feeding crude to its CDU earlier this week in efforts to restart the plant," Petronas told Reuters over email.

The Pengerang Refining development, part of Petronas’ USD27 billion Pengerang Integrated Complex, consists of a 300,000 barrels-per-day (bpd) oil refinery and a petrochemical complex with a production capacity of 7.7 million tonnes per year in the southern Malaysian state of Johor.

The project, originally known as RAPID, or Refinery and Petrochemical Integrated Development, was shut in April after a fire damaged its atmospheric residue desulfurization (ARDS) unit.

It had been scheduled to restart last month but that was pushed back to August, they said.

Repairs at the ARDS unit were expected to take months so the refinery has modified the type of crude it processes to low-sulfur oil such as Murban crude from Abu Dhabi, the sources said.

Petronas said the ARDS is scheduled to come back online in 2020.

The refinery’s strong demand for Murban crude saw Malaysia’s imports of the oil jump to about 4.6 million barrels in June and July, Refinitiv data showed.

As MRC wrote previously, Petronas is in plans to take its low density polyethylene (LDPE) plant off-stream for a brief maintenance. The company is likely to start turnaround at its plant in end-August, 2019. The plant is slated to remain off-line for around end-September, 2019. Located at Kerteh in Terrenganu, Malaysia, LDPE plant has a production capacity of 255,000 mt/year.

Petronas, short for Petroliam Nasional Berhad, is a Malaysian oil and gas company wholly owned by the Government of Malaysia. The Group is engaged in a wide spectrum of petroleum activities, including upstream exploration and production of oil and gas to downstream oil refining; marketing and distribution of petroleum products; trading; gas processing and liquefaction; gas transmission pipeline network operations; marketing of liquefied natural gas; petrochemical manufacturing and marketing; shipping; automotive engineering; and property investment.
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- In a major compounding deal, PolyOne is selling its Performance Products & Solutions unit to SK Capital Partners for USD775m (EUR700m) in cash, said the company.

PP&S posted sales of almost USD700m (EUR632m) last year, representing about 20% of total sales for Avon Lake, Ohio-based PolyOne.

The unit also make polypropylene-based compounds and provides contract manufacturing. It sells mainly into North American construction and automotive end markets.

SK is a New York-based private equity firm. It has become a major player in plastic additives through its acquisitions of part of Chemtura in 2013 and of SI Group last year. SK had operated the Chemura businesses as Addivant. The combined additives firm operates as SI Group.

In a news release, PolyOne CEO Robert Patterson said that his firm “conducted what became a very competitive bidding process for our PP&S segment.”

He added that “Ultimately, we determined that divesting the business to SK Capital Partners would provide greater flexibility to accelerate our specialty growth strategy and is in the best interest of customers, employees and shareholders.”

After the sale, Patterson said that PolyOne “can further refine our focus on investing in and growing our three remaining segments: speciality engineered materials; colour, additives, and inks; and distribution.”

Jack Norris, a managing director of SK Capital, said: “PP&S is a market leader with a rich heritage in the PVC and polypropylene compounding industry. We are excited about the opportunity to further strengthen the business through both growth and improvement initiatives, similar to how we’ve approached several other investments that were corporate carveouts.”

The deal is scheduled to close in the fourth quarter of 2019.

In 2018, sales at PP&S were up more than 2%, but the unit’s operating profit declined by more than 4%. PP&S operates 13 manufacturing sites — nine in the US, two in Canada and single sites in Mexico and China.

The PP&S business includes Geon-brand PVC compounds, which are one of PolyOne’s oldest legacy businesses. The materials first were made by rubber supplier BF Goodrich, which launched production of PVC resin and related compounds and end products in the 1920s before it began selling the materials to outside customers in the 1940s.

Goodrich spun off Geon as a separate business in 1993, with the firm later divesting its PVC resin business. Geon then merged with Cleveland-based MA Hanna Co. — a longtime mining firm that had transitioned into plastics — in 2000 to form PolyOne.

PolyOne expects to record a pretax gain of approximately $600m (€541m) at the time the sale is completed. Patterson said that, in the short term, proceeds from the sale will be used to pay down debt on PolyOne’s revolving line of credit and to reduce its overall net debt.

In 2018, PolyOne had sales of about USD3.5bn (EUR3.1bn). The firm employs almost 6,900 worldwide.
MRC