Amcor develops new lightweight PET bottles for pasteurized beer

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Amcor PET bottlesAmcor has recently announced that it has designed the first polyethylene terephthalate (PET) bottles for pasteurized beer in Brazil. The company has used its leading-edge design technology to develop these bottles, said Plasticsinsight.

Amcor has custom-designed 600-milliliter containers for beverage maker, New Age Bebidas of Leme in Sao Paulo. The bottles feature the beauty of a glass-like and champagne-style base combined with the convenience of lightweight and shatter-resistant PET.

The design from Amcor showcases New Age Bebidas’s Salzburg craft beer brand and differentiates it from the standard glass bottle designs. Featuring a crown metal cap and replicating the standard glass bottle, the PET containers from Amcor are a replacement for glass during the filling and capping process. It withstands the internal pressure and high-heat conditions of the tunnel pasteurization process.

Amcor uses an oxygen scavenger barrier additive to prevent oxygen ingress and egress, providing up to four months of shelf life. The bottle is compatible with existing recycling streams and is 100% recyclable. The lightweight containers significantly reduce transportation costs, besides energy and carbon dioxide (CO2) emission reductions along the supply chain.

Talking about the market scenario, Felipe Salles, Business Development Director for Amcor in Brazil, says, “As the craft beer market grows, we are partnering with brewers to achieve attractive designs and cost savings with PET bottles, while also meeting shelf-life requirements."

Highlighting the characteristics of the new PET bottles, Rodolfo Salles, Research and Development Manager for Amcor in Brazil, stresses, “PET bottles offer design advantages over glass while being lighter weight, more easily and safely portable, and unbreakable, and provide the required barrier protection."

Showing his excitement on the new bottles, Fabio Violin, President of New Age Bebidas, observes, “Innovation and differentiation are the name of the game in the craft beer market in Brazil.” The flexibility of PET packaging allows us to develop a unique replacement for glass that will deliver broad consumer appeal throughout Latin America, adds Fabio.

New Age Bebidas introduced the new beer packaging format at the Amcor stand during the Fispal Tecnologia show held in late June 2019 at Sao Paulo, besides undertaking a pre-market trial in select cities in the state of Sao Paulo.

Amcor works with leading companies around the world to protect their products differentiate brands, besides improving value chains through a range of flexible and rigid packaging including specialty cartons, closures, and services. The company is focused on making packaging that is increasingly light-weighted, recyclable and reusable, and is made by using a rising amount of recycled content. Presently, Amcor has operations at 250 locations in 40-plus countries.

Having started its operations in 1988 as a small producer and distributor of international beverage brands, today, New Age Bebidas sells more than 300 beverage products including soft drinks, energy drinks, ices, vodka, cachaca, premium beers and various varieties of juices and teas.
MRC

LyondellBasell announces quarterly dividend

MOSCOW (MRC) -- LyondellBasell, one of the largest plastics, chemicals and refining companies in the world, has announced that it has declared a dividend of USD1.05 per share ,as per the company's press release.

The dividend will be paid on September 11, 2019 to shareholders of record September 4, 2019, with an ex-dividend date of September 3, 2019.

As MRC wrote previously, in August 2016, LyondellBasell made the final investment decision to build a high density polyethylene (HDPE) plant on the US Gulf Coast. The plant will have an annual capacity of 1.1 billion pounds (500,000 metric tons) and will be the first commercial plant to employ LyondellBasell's new proprietary Hyperzone PE technology. The start-up of the new plant is scheduled for 2019.

LyondellBasell is one of the largest plastics, chemicals and refining companies in the world. Driven by its 13,000 employees around the globe, LyondellBasell produces materials and products that are key to advancing solutions to modern challenges like enhancing food safety through lightweight and flexible packaging, protecting the purity of water supplies through stronger and more versatile pipes, and improving the safety, comfort and fuel efficiency of many of the cars and trucks on the road. LyondellBasell sells products into approximately 100 countries and is the world's largest licensor of polyolefin technologies.
MRC

BP plans end-August maintenance at German Scholven oil refinery

MOSCOW (MRC) -- BP, the world's petrochemical giant, plans to begin a planned shutdown at the end of August on "some production facilities" at the Scholven site of its Gelsenkirchen oil refinery in Germany, according to EconomicTimes.

Various units at the plant will be shut down for around seven weeks, BP said.

The company did not specify which units will be shut at the refinery, which has a capacity to process 246,000 barrels per day.

BP operates two crackers (No. 3 and 4) in Gelsenkirchen with the total production capacity of 1,650,000 tonnes of ethylene and 645,000 of propylene per year.

As MRC reported earlier, in November 2018, BP Plc’s trading arm entered a tolling agreement with the owners of an idled oil refinery in St. Croix, US Virgin Islands, cementing plans to bring the plant back online six years after it was idled by previous owners. Under BP’s tolling agreement with Limetree Bay Refining LLC, owner of the idled Hovensa refinery, BP will supply the facility with crude and sell its products, low-sulfur fuels that will meet an International Maritime Organization mandate in 2020.

Ethylene and propylene are feedstocks for producing polyethylene (PE) and polyprolypele (PP).

According to MRC's ScanPlast report, Russia's estimated PE consumption was 1,081,100 tonnes in the first half of 2019, up by 8% year on year. Deliveries of all PE grades increased. Meanwhile, the estimated consumption of PP in the Russian market totalled 694,210 tonnes in January-June 2019, up by 14% year on year. The supply of propylene block copolymers (PP-block) and propylene homopolymers (PP-homo) increased.

BP is one of the world's leading international oil and gas companies, providing its customers with fuel for transportation, energy for heat and light, retail services and petrochemicals products for everyday items.
MRC

ExxonMobil has not determined the restart date at its cracker in Scotland

MOSCOW (MRC) -- ExxonMobil has not determined the dates of the resumption of production at its recently shut cracker in Mossmorran (Scotland, UK), according to NCT.

Tus, the Fife cracker in Mossmorran is currently offline.

On Monday, 12 August 2019, ExxonMobil Chemical (Baytown, Texas/USA) shut down the plant due to mechanical failure of two boilers. Emergency flaring was required before shutting down operations.

On 15 August, the company announced that the cracker was at a standstill. How long the outage will last is not known, but repairs should have begun after investigations are carried out.

The cracker has had its controversies in the last several years due to frequent flaring. It is operated by ExxonMobil, but co-owned with Shell.

Mossmorran is connected to the Grangemouth-Wilton-FawleyUK ethylene pipelines. About 50% of ethylene output is processed at adjoining British petrochemical plants. The other half being transported via the Firth of Forth near Edinburgh to the port of Antwerp/Belgium.

As MRC wrote earlier, Exxon Mobil Corp is planning to spend more than 500 million pounds (USD650 million) to upgrade the UK’s largest oil refinery, Fawley, on England’s south coast.

Ethylene and propylene are feedstocks for producing polyethylene (PE) and polyprolypele (PP).

According to MRC's ScanPlast report, Russia's estimated PE consumption was 1,081,100 tonnes in the first half of 2019, up by 8% year on year. Deliveries of all PE grades increased. Meanwhile, the estimated consumption of PP in the Russian market totalled 694,210 tonnes in January-June 2019, up by 14% year on year. The supply of propylene block copolymers (PP-block) and propylene homopolymers (PP-homo) increased.

ExxonMobil is the largest non-government owned company in the energy industry and produces about 3% of the world's oil and about 2% of the world's energy.
MRC

Indorama Ventures to restart dormant plant at Sulphur in late August

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Indorama Venture's dormant plant at Sulphur (USA) plans to start up operations again in late August, as per American Press.

The facility, previously owned by OxyChem, is on 250 acres located in Sulphur. Indorama (IVL), which began its work here in 2015, refurbished and expanded the dormant ethane cracker and had been attempting the start-up of operations that would produce 370,000 metric tons of ethylene and 30,000 metric tons of propylene.

Site Director Barre said most of the issues were the result of a byproduct of the process - an oil-like substance, getting into the "wrong places" and fouling up instrumentation. He said the contamination caused the boilers to trip, which in turn caused a loss of steam.

Regulators visited the site in July, and the company worked with them to resolve environmental and permit issues.

As MRC informed earlier, in August 2019, IVL, a global chemical producer, entered into an agreement to acquire Sinterama S.p.A, a leading Global polyester automotive interiors and high performance colored yarns manufacturer. The acquisition comprises five production sites in four countries in Italy, Brazil, China and Bulgaria, the last being a new market for IVL. It has a combined capacity of around 30,000 tonnes/ annum. Europe imports over 275 KT of yarns annually and Sinterama can grow and strengthen its position as local supplier. The company currently employs 889 people.

Ethylene and propylene are feedstocks for producing polyethylene (PE) and polyprolypele (PP).

According to MRC's ScanPlast report, Russia's estimated PE consumption was 1,081,100 tonnes in the first half of 2019, up by 8% year on year. Deliveries of all PE grades increased. Meanwhile, the estimated consumption of PP in the Russian market totalled 694,210 tonnes in January-June 2019, up by 14% year on year. The supply of propylene block copolymers (PP-block) and propylene homopolymers (PP-homo) increased.

Indorama Ventures Public Company Limited, listed in Thailand, is one of the world's leading petrochemicals producers, a global manufacturing footprint with 59 sites in 20 countries across Africa, Asia, Europe and North America. The company's portfolio is comprises necessities and high value-added (HVA) categories of polymers, fibers, and packaging. Indorama Ventures has approx. 19,000 employees worldwide and consolidated revenue of USD 10.7 billion in 2018. The company is listed in the Dow Jones Sustainability Index (DJSI).
MRC