Sirmax reveals plans for US recycling unit

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Italy-based compounder Sirmax is planning to build a USD17 mln production facility for recycled compounds in Indiana, US, said Amiplastics.

The plant, to be located alongside the company's existing compounding site in Anderson, IN, will manufacture compounds using recycled resins for the appliances, automotive, consumer goods, power tools, and other markets.

The project will receive over USD2 M in tax increment financing (TIF) bonds from the Anderson city government. The new facility will utilize the expertise of Societa Europea di Regenerazione (SER), an Italian plastics recycling company that was recently acquired by Sirmax.

SER reprocesses approximately 20,000 tonnes/y of post consumer plastics. Sirmax, which claims to be the fourth
largest producer of technical PP compounds in the world and the biggest non-integrated compounder in Europe, recorded sales of EUR 300 M in 2018 and expects a turnover of roughly EUR 385 M in 2019.

As MRC informed earlier, Sirmax (Cittadella) is continuing to grow its footprint. In a deal the financial details of which were not disclosed, the company recently acquired all shares in thermoplastic compounds producer Nord Color (San Vito al Tagliamento / Italy). The purchase of the latter – which caters to the automotive, E&E, furniture, construction and sports & leisure industries – not only consolidates Sirmax’s growth strategy, it also complements and expands the company’s own PP compounds product range.

MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Negotiations on the last major regulatory hurdle to restarting an idled Caribbean oil refinery have dragged on, threatening further delay to a private-equity backed project that seeks to profit from a 2020 clean-air fuel mandate, said Hydrocarbonprocessing.

Limetree Bay Refining remains in talks with federal and local officials on modifications to a 2011 settlement with the previous owner of the refinery, Hovensa, a venture between Hess Corp and Venezuela’s state-run oil firm PDVSA.

"The parties are about 80%-85% through the document and appendices," said Jean-Pierre Oriol, commissioner of the U.S. Virgin Islands Department of Planning and Natural Resources that is a party to the agreement.

Limetree Bay is undergoing a USD1.6 billion refurbishment aiming to meet an International Maritime Organization requirement that ocean-going vessels cut sulfur emissions to reduce air pollution on Jan. 1.

The project will restore a portion of the refinery to process about 210,000 barrels per day (bpd) of crude, down from 550,000 bpd before it filed for bankruptcy protection.

The 2011 agreement required more than USD700 million in new pollution controls to settle violations of the U.S. Clean Air Act. The changes are expected to require spending less than USD700 million, reflecting the smaller processing capacity.

Limetree Bay and other refiners aim to process cheap, high-sulfur crude into clean fuels and capture expected higher margins as terminals and shippers stock up. The plant restart already has been pushed back to early 2020 from late this year, a delay that means owners Arclight Capital Partners and trader Freepoint Commodities will miss initial demand for marine fuel with less than 0.5% sulfur.

An Arclight Capital spokesman did not reply to requests for comment. A spokeswoman for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency did not have immediate comment on the status of the talks. Oriol said there was no timetable for completion of the changes to the settlement.

According to MRC's ScanPlast report, Russia's estimated PE consumption totalled 1,724,670 tonnes in the first ten months of 2019, up by 7% year on year. Shipments of all PE grades increased. The estimated PP consumption in the Russian market in January-October 2019 totalled 1,066,520 tonnes, up by 7% year on year. Supply of block copolymers of propylene (PP block copolymer) and homopolymer of propylene (homopolymer PP) increased, demand for statistical copolymers (PP random copolymer) decreased.
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MOSCOW (MRC) -- Mitsui Chemicals, Inc. is collaborating with Kaisei Inc. on a project aimed at the development of bio-PP at commercial scale. The project has been adopted by Japan's Ministry of the Environment as part of its plans for a carbon-free society ambition, reported BioplasticsMagazine.

Mitsui Chemicals' bio-PP pilot project will aid in the country’s effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

The Ministry of the Environment is further supporting a carbon-free society by accelerating the construction of resource recycling systems for plastics and other materials. This project will run trials for switching to renewable resources as a substitute for petroleum-derived plastics as well as for building recycling processes for plastics and other materials.

Mitsui Chemicals will therefore be conducting the world's first bio-PP industrialization demonstration test. This will involve conducting numerous and varied evaluations of technologies, quality, economic efficiency, and environmental impact such as GHG reduction. After solving these issues, Mitsui Chemicals Group will consider commercializing the production of bio-PP. Production, said the company, will start in 2024 at the earliest. The project will be part of the expansion of the company’s so-called Blue Value products , or environmental contribution value products, based on its climate change policy and plastic strategies. In 2015, Mitsui developed the environmental contribution value, Blue Value, to achieve its goal of realizing a "cohesive society in harmony with the environment". Under the unique environmental impact assessment criteria Blue Value Index, the Mitsui Chemicals Group certifies products and services as having Blue Value that are deemed to reduce CO2, protect resources, and harmonize with nature, thereby contributing to the environment in three elements.

"We aim to commercialize bio-PP, which has yet to be produced from biomass unlike other major resins We will build a circular model throughout the manufacturing supply chain to significantly reduce CO2 emissions," the company announced in a statement released 26 September.

Polypropylene has a wide range of applications, spanning automobile-parts to medical care products, home appliances, housing and food products, and accounts for more than 20 percent of the plastic produced in Japan. However, due to technical difficulties, production of polypropylene from biomass has not been established at the industrial level.

Conventional plastics are produced from fossil resources that have been stored underground for mhundreds of millions of years, while bioplastics are primarily derived from plants. Since plants absorb CO2 from the atmosphere to grow, they offer a more effective way to reduce CO2 emissions, thus helping to mitigate global warming. Bio-PP derived from plants is a product expected to contribute to a more sustainable society.

The new production route towards commercialization involves the fermentation of various type of biomass - mainly non-edible plants - to produce isopropanol (IPA), which is then dehydrated to obtain propylene in a first-of-its-kind IPA method. Compared to other biomass production approaches studied by other companies thus far, this could prove to be a more cost-effective way to manufacture bio-PP.

Kaisei Inc. will cultivate biomass raw materials used by Mitsui Chemicals, collect wastes generated from biomass raw materials, and supply electricity to manufacturing facilities and manufactures fertilizers through its effective use. By collaborating with Kaisei Inc., Mitsui Chemicals aims to contribute to society through environmentally friendly action with a circular model that leverages the supply chain.

As MRC informed before, Mitsui Chemicals restarted its naphtha cracker in Japan on 11-12 May, 2019, following an unplanned outage. The cracker was shut in end-April, 2019 owing to power failure. Located at Chiba in Japan, the cracker has an ethylene capacity of 600,000 mt/year and propylene capacity of 331,000 mt/year.

According to MRC's ScanPlast report, the estimated PP consumption in the Russian market in January-October 2019 totalled 1,066,520 tonnes, up by 7% year on year. Supply of block copolymers of propylene (PP block copolymer) and homopolymer of propylene (homopolymer PP) increased, demand for statistical copolymers (PP random copolymer) decreased.

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) -- LANXESS has signed a EUR1bn "sustainable" revolving credit facility, said the company.

The facility’s terms depend partly on LANXESS’ successful reduction of its greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The terms are also linked to the increase in the proportion of women on the company’s top three management levels.

The sustainable credit facility has an initial term of five years, with two options for one-year extensions. It replaces a syndicated loan of EUR1.25bn expiring in May 2023.

"We are convinced that sustainable criteria are also becoming increasingly important for the capital markets,” said chief financial officer (CFO) Michael Pontzen. Last month, LANXESS announced that it will go "climate neutral" and eliminate its greenhouse gas emissions of currently around 3.2m tonnes/year of carbon dioxide (CO2) by 2040.

The credit facility was coordinated by Deutsche Bank and UniCredit.

As MRC informed earlier, LANXESS envisages an extensive range of potential applications for blow-molded components made from technical plastics in automobiles.

LANXESS is a leading specialty chemicals company with sales of EUR 7.2 billion in 2018. The company currently has about 15,500 employees in 33 countries and is represented at 60 production sites worldwide. The core business of LANXESS is the development, manufacturing and marketing of chemical intermediates, additives, specialty chemicals and plastics. LANXESS is listed in the leading sustainability indices Dow Jones Sustainability Index (DJSI World and Europe) and FTSE4Good.
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- BASF-YPC, a 50-50 joint venture of BASF and Sinopec, is likely to undertake a planned shutdown its naphtha cracker in April 2020, according to Apic-online.

A Polymerupdate source in China informed that the company has planned to start turnaround at the cracker on April 5, 2020. The plant is expected to remain under maintenance for around two months.

Located in Jiangsu, China, the cracker has an ethylene capacity of 750,000 mt/year and propylene capacity of 400,000 mt/year.

As MRC wrote previously, in 2018, BASF-YPC conducted three-week maintenance works at its naphtha cracker in China until May 9, 2018, when the cracker restarted. Located in Nanjing, China, the cracker has an ethylene capacity of 740,000 mt/year.

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

According to MRC's ScanPlast report, Russia's estimated PE consumption totalled 1,724,670 tonnes in the first ten months of 2019, up by 7% year on year. Shipments of all PE grades increased. The estimated PP consumption in the Russian market in January-October 2019 totalled 1,066,520 tonnes, up by 7% year on year. Supply of block copolymers of propylene (PP block copolymer) and homopolymer of propylene (homopolymer PP) increased, demand for statistical copolymers (PP random copolymer) decreased.

BASF is the world's leading chemical company. Its portfolio ranges from chemicals, plastics, performance products and crop protection products to oil and gas.

Sinopec Corp. is one of the largest scale integrated energy and chemical company with upstream, midstream and downstream operations. Its principal business includes: exploring, developing, producing and trading crude oil and natural gas; producing, storing, transporting and distributing and marketing petroleum products, petrochemical products, synthetic fiber, fertilizer and other chemical products. Its refining capacity and ethylene capacity rank No.2 and No.4 globally. Sinopec listed in Hong Kong, New York, London and Shanghai in August 2001. Sinopec Group, the parent company of Sinopec Corp., is ranked the 5th in Fortune Global 500 in 2012.
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