Packaging supplier Comar buys medical device molder iMark

MOSCOW (MRC) -- In a move to expand its footprint in the medical and pharmaceutical segments, rigid plastic packaging supplier Comar has acquired iMark Molding, a medical parts molder headquartered in Woodsville, Wis., for an undisclosed amount, said Canplastics.

In a statement, Comar said that iMark specializes in complex scientific injection molding, automated and manual assembly, and cleanroom operations, and operates out of an ISO13485-certified 130,000-square-foot facility with more than 30 injection molding presses and 15,000 square feet of certified ISO Class 7 cleanroom.

The company won an award as “Wisconsin Manufacturer of the Year, Special Award for Enterprise Precision", Comar said.

"There will be no plant closures or employee layoffs for Comar or iMark as part of this acquisition,” Comar’s statement said. “Comar and iMark fully expect to continue to deliver to their customers with zero interruptions or quality issues."

iMark president Mark Sturtevant will continue to manage the company’s day-to-day operations, the statement added.

As MRC informed earlier, Nestle is to invest up to Swiss francs (Swfr) 2bn (USD2.1bn) to shift packaging production from virgin to recycled polymers over the next five years. The company is to source up to 2m tonnes of food-grade recycled plastics and has allocated Swfr1.5bn up to 2025 to pay a premium for those materials as part of a drive to create a viable market for those products. The company will seek operational efficiencies to keep the process revenue neutral.

A broad range of applications in the packaging industry is made of LDPE or HDPE in various forms – loose, in rolls, or in blocks.

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

According to MRC's ScanPlast report, Russia's estimated PE consumption totalled 1,904,410 tonnes in the first eleven months of 2019, up by 6% year on year. Shipments of all PE grades increased. PE shipments increased from both domestic producers and foreign suppliers. The PP consumption in the Russian market was 1,161,830 tonnes in January-November 2019, up by 7% year on year. Deliveries of all grades of propylene polymers increased, with the homopolymer PP segment accounting for the largest increase.

Founded in 1949, Comar is headquartered in Voorhees, N.J. The company operates nine manufacturing and distribution locations across the U.S., and uses injection molding, injection blow molding, injection stretch blow molding, and extrusion blow molding processes.
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- At the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, during a reception hosted by Sabic Vice Chairman and CEO Yousef bin Abdullah Al-Benyan, the company underlined its sustainability ambition with the announcement of its far-reaching plans to work with a network of partners to close the loop on plastics waste in 2020., said Plasticsnews.

To that end, the company has developed a portfolio of materials, marketed under the brand name Trucircle.

Closed-loop recycling of plastic will see post-consumer plastic waste collected, recycled and used to make new products. It requires a total transformation of the value chain, which Sabic has been working hard with its downstream and upstream partners to achieve.

Sabic’s Trucircle portfolio comprises solutions spanning design for recyclability, mechanically recycled products, certified circular products from feedstock recycling of plastic waste streams and certified renewable products from bio-based feedstock. These solutions have been made possible, said the company by a collaboration with UK-based Plastic Energy Ltd. which enables the recycling of plastic waste which has historically been classified as non-recyclable.

Over the past 12 months, customers of the company and brand owners such as Unilever and Tupperware Brands have brought to market a number of consumer products based on Sabic’s new Trucircle solutions.

"2020 will see us forge bold, new collaborations with high caliber partners in order to create a circular, transparent and sustainable economy for plastics, and we invite players from across the value chain to join us to truly transform our world,” said Mark Vester, Circular Economy Leader at Sabic.

Sabic also had an update on its new semi-commercial plant for the production of pyrolysis oil from plastic waste in Geleen, which is expected to open in 2012. Here, circular polymers will be produced from a feedstock known as Tacoil — a patented product from UK-based Plastic Energy Ltd. — from the recycling of low quality, mixed plastic waste otherwise destined for incineration or landfill.

Sabic’s commitment to using more plastic waste as feedstock for its circular polymers runs parallel to its 2020 ambition to increase the uptake of recycled plastic from mechanical recycling. Sabic is determined to increase the amount of plastic it processes in Europe to 200.000 metric tons by 2025, in line with its pledge to the EU Commission.

Sabic Europe, an affiliate of Sabic, conducted maintenance works at its cracker No.3 at Geleen site in the Netherlands this autumn. The planned maintenance started in September and lasted around 2 months. The company operates two steam crackers in Geleen which are capable of producing 1,250,000 tons/year of ethylene and 675,000 tons/year of propylene in total.

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

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

MOSCOW (MRC) -- China’s State Council has announced the extension of the Lunar New Year holiday to 2 February 2020 as the country attempt to contain the new virus outbreak. The holiday originally was from 24 January to 30 January 2020, reported CommoPlast.

In some places including Shanghai and Guangdong Province, businesses would remain closed until 9 February 2020, according to the official announcement.

Meanwhile, the Education Department would issue separate notice pertaining to the resumption of schools and colleges across the country.

We remind that, as MRC wrote before, China Sinochem Group is expected to start up a new crude processing unit and a petrochemical complex in southeastern China around mid-2020, marking the state firm's first foray into making petrochemicals. The state-run oil and chemicals group is adding 60,000 barrels per day of crude processing capacity at an existing 240,000-bpd refinery in Quanzhou, Fujian province. It will also begin operations around June of a petrochemical plant, including a naphtha cracker that can produce one million tonnes per year (tpy) of ethylene. The expansion is part of a new wave of investments in China, led by private chemical giants Hengli Petrochemical and Zhejiang Rongsheng Holdings, that have boosted output of petrochemicals such as paraxylene (PX), the key raw material for synthetic fibre and water bottles. China is the world's largest petrochemical importer.

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

According to MRC's ScanPlast report, Russia's estimated PE consumption totalled 1,904,410 tonnes in the first eleven months of 2019, up by 6% year on year. Shipments of all PE grades increased. PE shipments increased from both domestic producers and foreign suppliers. The PP consumption in the Russian market was 1,161,830 tonnes in January-November 2019, up by 7% year on year. Deliveries of all grades of propylene polymers increased, with the homopolymer PP segment accounting for the largest increase.
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- MarkWest Javelina, has shut its Corpus Christi cracker owing to power failure, according to Apic-online.

A Polymerupdate source in the US informed that, the company has halted operations at the cracker on January 26, 2020. Further details on duration of shutdown could not be ascertained.

Located in Corpus Christi, Texas, U.S., the cracker has an ethylene capacity of 1 million mt/year and a propylene capacity of 45,000 mt/year.

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

According to MRC's ScanPlast report, Russia's estimated PE consumption totalled 1,904,410 tonnes in the first eleven months of 2019, up by 6% year on year. Shipments of all PE grades increased. PE shipments increased from both domestic producers and foreign suppliers. The PP consumption in the Russian market was 1,161,830 tonnes in January-November 2019, up by 7% year on year. Deliveries of all grades of propylene polymers increased, with the homopolymer PP segment accounting for the largest increase.

Markwest Javelina Company, L.L.C. was founded in 2008. The company's line of business includes providing oil and gas services.
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Motiva Enterprises plans to finish shutting down the gasoline-producing unit at its 607,000 barrel-perday (bpd) Port Arthur Arthur, Texas, refinery on Monday to begin a planned overhaul of the unit, sources familiar with plant operations said, as per Hydrocarbonprocessing.

Motiva began shutting the 81,000 bpd fluidic catalytic cracking unit (FCCU) on Sunday for a planned 50-day overhaul, the sources said.

Motiva declined to comment on Monday.

While the FCCU is shut for the planned 50-day overhaul, Motiva will also shut the 18,000-bpd alkylation unit and the 50,000-bpd cat feed hydrotreater for 30-day overhauls, the sources said.

As MRC informed earlier, Motiva Enterprises, the US refining arm of Saudi Aramco, acquired 100% of Flint Hills Resources chemical plant, adjacent to its Port Arthur, Texas, oil refinery. The Flint Hills plant operates a 1.57 billion-pound-per-year ethylene cracker, a unit producing nylon component cyclohexane, and a network of pipelines and storage caverns. Saudi Aramco, in its IPO prospectus, said the cash payment will be determined as per the project value at SAR 7.13 billion (USD1.9 billion).

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

According to MRC's ScanPlast report, Russia's estimated PE consumption totalled 1,904,410 tonnes in the first eleven months of 2019, up by 6% year on year. Shipments of all PE grades increased. PE shipments increased from both domestic producers and foreign suppliers. The PP consumption in the Russian market was 1,161,830 tonnes in January-November 2019, up by 7% year on year. Deliveries of all grades of propylene polymers increased, with the homopolymer PP segment accounting for the largest increase.

Motiva Enterprises, LLC, is a fully owned affiliate of Saudi Refining Inc. and headquartered in Houston, Texas, United States with revenue of USD24 billion. Previously, it was a 50–50 joint venture between Shell Oil Company (the wholly owned American subsidiary of Royal Dutch Shell) and Saudi Refining Inc. (controlled by Saudi Aramco).
MRC