Turnover growth for Plastic Turned Parts

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Plastic Turned Parts (PTP) has reported a doubling in company turnover since 2015. The revenue increase is related to on-going investment in new manufacturing equipment, said PRW.

Over this same period, the Hertfordshire-based company has invested more than ?750,000 in six new CNC turning machines. Five of the machines were delivered by Citizen Machinery. Four of these featured Cincom sliding head lathes, with the fifth using a Miyano fixed-head model.

The additions mean there are now nine lathes operating at the site. The company also uses three turn-mill centres for machining bar and billets between 65 and 150mm in diameter. A Haas CNC mill, installed in 2005, is used for second-work operations and also destructive testing.

All equipment, apart from two Citizen lathes, are fitted with bar magazines from Italian manufacturer Iemca. Commenting on the new equipment, PTP MD and owner Jonathan Newis, said: "To enable us to achieve sustained business growth, we only use the best production equipment on the market. That applies to everything in use on the shopfloor, including the barfeeds, which is why there are seven Iemcas in use here.

Newis singled out the Iemca Boss 338-HD Superfast, feeding a 20mm capacity slider for particular praise. He noted that turning flexible plastic bar is an “esoteric art”, as unlike metal bars, thinner stock can sag under its own weight, both within the magazine and in the space between it and the lathe.

The Italian manufacturer customised the machine to use solid panels instead of standard cross struts for supporting the plastic bars along the length of the magazine to eliminate this issue.

Bespoke clamping blocks are used to ensure smaller-diameter bars remain horizontal within the gap between the barfeed and entry into the turning centre.

MRC

Oil consumption tracking is all about Asia

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Oil market analysts must make sense of a bewildering array of statistics about production, consumption and inventories, compiled and published with varying definitions and degrees of accuracy and timeliness, reported Reuters.

The challenge is to form an accurate and nuanced picture of the whole market capable of generating useful forecasts, without becoming lost in the insignificant details.

The World Bank identifies around 200 economies in the world, but on the consumption side, at least, only a handful are individually important for market analysis.

The oil market is best thought of as a complex adaptive system (“Persistence of instability in the oil market”, Reuters, Sept. 15, 2016).

Complex systems are "large networks of components with no central control and simple rules of operation that give rise to complex collective behavior".

From the demand side of the oil market, however, the only countries worth tracking individually are those with consumption large enough to affect the market as a whole and changing fast enough to alter equilibrium.

Just ten countries account for well over half of global oil consumption and three-quarters of the incremental growth over the last decade, and these are the ones it is crucial to follow closely.

Other countries are too small to have an individual impact, though they can make a difference in groups when consumption changes collectively in response to common global influences such as price spikes and recession.

The most important influence on global oil consumption growth comes from China and India, which are large and fast-growing consumers.

China’s oil consumption hit 13.5 million barrels per day (bpd) in 2018 and had grown by an average of 5.5% per year over the previous decade, according to data from BP.

India’s oil consumption hit 5.1 million bpd in 2018 and had increased by an average of 5.1% over the previous ten years.

China and India accounted for 19% of all oil consumption worldwide last year and 58% of all consumption growth over the last decade.

The two Asian giants play an increasingly dominant role in consumption analysis and stand in a category of their own.

The United States is next in importance, with consumption of 20.5 million bpd, roughly 50% higher than China and 300% higher than India, but with growth of just 0.5% per year in 2008-2018.

The United States accounts for roughly 20% of global consumption, slightly larger than China and India combined, but its slow rate of growth means it has a much less decisive impact on price formation.

Beyond the United States, come Saudi Arabia, Brazil, South Korea and possibly Russia, all medium-sized oil consumers which exhibited fast growth in 2008-2018.

Finally, Japan and Germany, medium-sized oil consumers which exhibited relatively rapid rates of declining oil use over the last decade.

Canada is a similar-sized oil consumer but exhibited only very slow growth in 2008-2018, making it relatively unimportant analytically.

These ten countries accounted for 60% of all global consumption in 2018 and 76% of all consumption growth in 2008-2018.

Tracking global oil consumption is mostly about following closely what is happening in these key consuming countries.

The remaining 190 economies consumed 40% of global oil but accounted for less than a quarter of the decade growth.

These economies are too small to have a significant influence on oil consumption and prices individually, though they can have important effects in aggregate.

Oil price spikes and slumps have a synchronized and significant impact on consumption on these other economies, big enough to help move the market.

Global and regional business cycles also tend to have a common impact on consumption in these economies that can be significant in aggregate.

And commodity price cycles (including both oil and non-oil commodities) can have a significant common impact on commodity-dependent exporting countries that shows up in their collective oil consumption.

In most cases, the influences on the smaller consuming economies from oil prices, the macroeconomic cycle and the commodity cycle are the same as for the major consuming economies.

The top ten oil consumers include a fairly representative sample of advanced economies (United States, Japan, Germany, Canada and South Korea) and emerging markets (China, India, Brazil, Russia and Saudi Arabia).

The top ten also include a representative mix of oil producers (United States, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Canada and Brazil) as well as consumers (China, India, Japan, Germany and South Korea).

And there is a good geographic mix including North America (United States and Canada), Latin America (Brazil), Europe (Germany and Russia), the Middle East (Saudi Arabia) and Asia (China, India, Japan and South Korea).

Trends in the top ten oil consumers therefore provide a useful proxy for the broader oil market – making the task of tracking worldwide consumption growth much simpler and easier.
MRC

Trinseo and Fernholz to jointly develop high quality recycled PS

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Trinseo, the global materials company and manufacturer of plastics, latex binders, and synthetic rubber, announced today the initiation of a joint development project with Fernholz - a leading manufacturer of plastics packaging - to develop a high-quality polystyrene (PS) product composed of 25% recycled material through a chemical recycling dissolution process, as per the company's press release.

The collaboration is expected to have commercial viability by mid-year 2020.

At the industry renown K 2019 trade fair, Trinseo announced plans to offer PS packaging with an average of 30% recycled content to customers in Europe by 2025. This partnership with Fernholz is a key milestone in progressing closer to this pledge.

"This project with Fernholz highlights that partnership along the value chain is key to showing polystyrene’s position as a highly sustainable, fully recyclable material for every end market," said Nicolas Joly, Global Business Director, Polystyrene and Feedstocks at Trinseo.

Dissolution of PS is a process in which post-consumer waste is dissolved in a solvent followed by a series of purification steps, separating the polymer from additives and contaminants, resulting in a PS polymer containing recycled post-consumer waste.

"Polystyrene is, for us, a key plastic material and state of the art product for the FFS (form-fill-seal) market, which is highly used in the dairy industry," said Uwe Fernholz, Managing Director and Owner of Fernholz Verpackungen. "We do see a great potential not only for this traditional FFS market but a rebound to other markets if we can prove the specific advantages of polystyrene in regard to recycling. We are delighted to support this project and emphasis customers to do similar."

Trinseo is engaged in further initiatives to unlock the circularity of PS, namely in depolymerization, clean mechanical recycling, as well as dissolution. PS circularity is well positioned as it diverts waste material away from landfills, leading to a reduction in greenhouse gases and harmful emissions.

With a leadership position in the development of circular PS, Trinseo is a founding member of Styrenics Circular Solutions, a consortium that explores new methods for PS recycling. In North America, AmSty – a Trinseo joint venture and leader in polystyrene and styrene monomer production – recently formed a joint venture of its own with Agilyx – a world leader in chemical recycling of waste plastic – named Regenyx LLC. The joint initiative is dedicated to fully recycling post-consumer PS materials back into new PS products, using the circular method known as the PolyUsable process.

As MRC informed before, Trinseo and its affiliate companies in Europe have announced a price decrease for all polystyrene (PS) grades in Europe. Effective December 1, 2019, or as existing contract terms allow, the contract and spot prices for the products listed below went down as follows:

-- STYRON general purpose polystyrene grades (GPPS) -- by EUR20 per metric ton;
-- STYRON and STYRON A-Tech and STYRON X- Tech high impact polystyrene grades (HIPS) - by EUR20 per metric ton.

According to MRC's ScanPlast report, Russia's estimated consumption of PS and styrene plastics totalled 411,080 tonnes in the first ten months of 2019, which corresponds to the last year's level. October estimated consumption of PS and styrene plastics rose by 2% year on year, totalling 46,740 tonnes.

Trinseo is a global materials company and manufacturer of plastics, latex and rubber. Trinseo's technology is used by customers in industries such as home appliances, automotive, building & construction, carpet, consumer electronics, consumer goods, electrical & lighting, medical, packaging, paper & paperboard, rubber goods and tires. Formerly known as Styron, Trinseo completed its renaming process in 1Q 2015. Trinseo had approximately USD4.6 billion in net sales in 2018, with 16 manufacturing sites around the world, and approximately 2,500 employees.
MRC

Hitachi considering deal to sell chems unit to Showa Denko

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Hitachi Ltd. is in talks with Showa Denko K.K. to sell its chemical unit Hitachi Chemical Co, said Reuters.

Hitachi is looking to offload its chemical unit so it can focus resources on what it believes to be growing sectors such as information technology and social infrastructure, the sources said.

If a deal is reached, Showa Denko is expected to launch a tender offer in mid-December to make Hitachi Chemical a wholly owned subsidiary for around ?900 billion (USD8.26 billion), the sources said.

An acquisition of that scale would be the largest yet for Showa Denko, and would boost the company’s revenue from advanced automotive batteries and functional materials, two segments that are growing fast as carmakers race to make more electric-powered vehicles.

Hitachi Chemical’s board agreed to negotiate with Showa Denko as a preferred bidder in what will probably be a tender offer that will include the rest of the company’s publicly listed shares, according to a person familiar with the matter who asked not to be identified because the information isn’t public.

As it was written earlier, in March, Hitachi sold its car navigation unit Clarion Co. to French auto parts maker Faurecia SA.

Hitachi and Honda Motor Co. said last month they will merge four auto parts suppliers under a new company to boost competitiveness.

Hitachi Chemical, established in 1962, makes a wide range of products, including materials for semiconductors and lithium-ion batteries as well as auto parts. The company logged a group net profit of ?28.7 billion on sales of ?681.0 billion in the business year through March.

Tokyo-based Showa Denko, a manufacturer of various chemical products set up in 1939, posted a group net profit of ?111.5 billion on sales of ?992.1 billion in 2018.
MRC

Silvergate launches new masterbatch products for film producers

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Wrexham-based masterbatch manufacturer Silvergate Plastics has developed a new solution which addresses the build-up of pigments in machinery, said PRW.

The company developed the tailor-made masterbatches after film manufacturers had reported pigment build-up in machines despite regular clean downs.

The clogging, Silvergate said in a release, slows down cycle times and disrupts overall production.

The new solution incorporates “quality ingredients that work together to improve dispersion during manufacture”.

Available in different colours, Silvergate’s new masterbatch formulation was developed specifically to address the issue for the film market.

Manufacturers trailing the products have reported improved colour accuracy for plastic films, plus increased productivity.
MRC