PTTGC & ALPLA complete formation of JV to build circular plastics plant

MOSCOW (MRC) -- PTT Global Chemical (PTTGC) and ALPLA have established a new joint venture, named Envicco, to build and operate a recycled plastics resin plant at the Asia Industrial Estate in Rayong Province, Thailand, according to Apic-online.

Envicco, owned 70% by PTTGC and 30% by ALPLA, will manufacture 30,000 t/y of recycled polyethylene ter-ephthalate (PET) and 15,000 t/y of recycled high-density polyethylene (HDPE). Commercial operations are expected to begin within the fourth quarter of 2021.

The new plant "substantially aligns" with PTTGC's Sustainability Strategy for Circular Economy, which aims to be a pilot company for plastic waste management by converting used plastic packaging to "high-quality" recycled plastic resins to serve the increasing market demand, PTTGC noted.

As MRC reported before, PTTGC has planned to bring on-stream its No. 2 cracker in Map Ta Phut by end-February, 2020. The cracker was shut for maintenance on January 20, 2020. Located at Map Ta Phut, Thailand, the No. 2 cracker has an ethylene production capacity of 400,000 mt/year.

The company also operates No. 1 cracker at the same site with a capacity of 515,000 tonnes of ethylene and 310,000 tonnes of propylene per year, which was also shut on 23 January, 2020, for a 40-day turnaround.

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

According to MRC's ScanPlast report, Russia's estimated PE consumption totalled 2,093,260 tonnes in 2019, up by 6% year on year. Shipments of all PE grades increased. PE shipments rose from both domestic producers and foreign suppliers. The estimated PP consumption in the Russian market was 1,260,400 tonnes in January-December 2019, up by 4% year on year. Supply of almost all grades of propylene polymers increased, except for statistical copolymers of propylene (PP random copolymers).

PTT Global Chemical is a leading player in the petrochemical industry and owns several petrochemical facilities with a combined capacity of 8.45 million tonnes a year.
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Teijin Ltd. is expanding its footprint in Europe with Teijin Automotive Center Europe GmbH, a new base in Wuppertal, Germany, that will house technical functions for the company’s automotive composites business, reported PlasticsNews.

Teijin Ltd. is expanding its footprint in Europe with Teijin Automotive Center Europe GmbH (TACE), a new base in Wuppertal, Germany, that will house technical functions for the company's automotive composites business.

The Japanese materials firm said Jan. 28 that the German operation will handle concept, designing, prototyping, evaluations, marketing and technical research for next-generation automotive components.The Wuppertal site will be up and running in February.

With TACE, Teijin said it will allow the company to establish a stronger platform for collaboration within the group's European automotive composites business. More specifically, TACE will explore and research opportunities for new technologies, as well as mergers and acquisitions, in an effort to accelerate joint development with European automakers and respond to demands for design freedom, productivity, cost efficiency, weight reduction and strength.

In the past few years, Teijin has been making strategic moves in Europe as it targets sales of approximately 1.7 billion euros (EUR1.9 billion) within its automotive composites business by 2030. This includes the acquisition last year of Benet Automotive sro., a Tier 1 supplier of composite components with three facilities in the Czech Republic and one in Germany. In 2018, Teijin acquired Portugal's Inapal Plasticos SA, another automotive composites supplier.

Teijin-owned Continental Structural Plastics Inc. of Auburn Hills, Mich., is also further tapping into Europe. The composites supplier's French operation is opening a new sheet molding compound plant.

In addition, Teijin is pursuing opportunities for other locations for its automotive composites business in the United States and China. The strategy is part of the company's response to the automotive industry's "ongoing shift toward connected, autonomous, shared and electric automobiles" and the growing need for more lightweight, multifunctional and multimaterial designs, the news release said.

As MRC wrote before, in late 2015, Japan's Teijin shut down its polycarbonate (PC) resin plant in Singapore by end 2015 and put the industrial facility on Jurong Island up for sale through an expression of interes. The plan to shutter was part of the company's restructuring exercise of its loss-making businesses. Hurt particularly by high energy costs, the Singapore plant, which began operations in October 1999, had also been beaten by low-cost China rivals. It had four production lines. One production line was shut down in October, 2014, and another in May, 2015. The remaining two were shut by late 2015. Teijin scaled back on its production of commoditised products under its restructuring exercise, and moved its production of PC resin to its subsidiary in China and to its plant in Matsuyama in Japan, which it considers especially suited to the development of high-performance products, the company said then.

According to MRC's ScanPlast report, Russia's estimated PC consumption (excluding imports and exports to/from Belarus) totalled 78,500 tonnes in 2019, up by 15% year on year (68,100 tonnes a year earlier).

Teijin is a technology-driven global group offering advanced solutions in the areas of sustainable transportation, information and electronics, safety and protection, environment and energy, and healthcare. Its main fields of operation are high-performance fibers such as aramid, carbon fibers & composites, healthcare, films, resin & plastic processing, polyester fibers, products converting and IT. The group has some 150 companies and around 17,000 employees spread out over 20 countries worldwide.
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- HoopTM, a circle as the symbol of circularity per excellence, is the project launched by Versalis, the petrochemical division of Italy's Eni SpA, for the development of a new technology to chemically recycle plastic waste, said Eni on is site.

On 17 February, 202, Versalis signed a joint development agreement with Italian engineering company, Servizi di Ricerche e Sviluppo (S.R.S.), which owns a pyrolysis technology that will be further developed to transform mixed plastic waste, that cannot be mechanically recycled, into raw material to produce new virgin polymers.

Versalis will leverage its technological and industrial expertise to build a first plant with a capacity of 6,000 tonnes per year at the Mantova site, with a view to progressively scaling-up, starting from its sites in Italy.

@This project confirms Versalis’ strategy to develop a chemical recycling technology that complements mechanical recycling technology, which the company is already engaged in, with the goal to give new life to plastic waste» said Daniele Ferrari, Versalis’ CEO. «The HoopTM project aims to create a theoretically endless plastic recycling process, producing new virgin polymers suitable for all applications and that are identical to polymers that come from fossil raw materials".

As MRC informed earlier, Versalis shut its cracking unit in Priolo, Sicily, for repairs in the last days of December, 2019. The capacity of the cracking unit at this complex is 490,000 tonnes of ethylene and 130,000 tonnes of propylene per year. The maintenance works lasted until February 2020. Loading at this cracker was reduced in November and December 2019.

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

According to MRC's ScanPlast report, Russia's estimated PE consumption totalled 2,093,260 tonnes in 2019, up by 6% year on year. Shipments of all PE grades increased. PE shipments rose from both domestic producers and foreign suppliers. The estimated PP consumption in the Russian market was 1,260,400 tonnes in January-December 2019, up by 4% year on year. Supply of almost all grades of propylene polymers increased, except for statistical copolymers of propylene (PP random copolymers).

Versalis is a petrochemical company, a 100% subsidiary of the Italian oil and gas company Eni SpA. The company produces a wide range of petrochemical products, and is also one of the world's leading elastomer companies.
Eni spa (Ente Nazionale Idrocarburi) is an Italian oil and gas company headquartered in Rome. Eni operates in 70 countries.
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- A contractor working at Shell's Pulau Bukom manufacturing site in Singapore has contracted the new coronavirus, reported Reuters with reference to the company's statement on Friday, as the city-state reported its biggest jump in new cases so far.

The Bukom manufacturing site in Singapore houses Shell's biggest wholly-owned refinery. The company said earlier it had sent some staff home from its main office at Metropolis in western Singapore after discovering another employee had been in contact with a carrier.

The company said its operations at both locations had been unaffected by the incidents.

The contractor working at the Bukom site tested positive for the fast-spreading coronavirus now labelled Covid-19 on Thursday, according to Shell statement on Friday.

Singapore's Health Ministry said in a separate statement that the 30-year old Singaporean is a relative of a 62-year old employee at Singapore's biggest bank, DBS Group Holdings, and first reported symptoms on Jan. 30.

The bank had asked 300 staff to leave its head office in the financial district on Wednesday and work from home as a precautionary measure after an employee tested positive for coronavirus.

A Shell spokeswoman said that as a precautionary measure, personnel who shared the same work area as the contractor were placed on leave of absence when Shell received an alert on a suspected case.

"We have thoroughly cleaned and disinfected the worker's work area and common areas in accordance with guidelines," she told Reuters.

She added that Shell had also implemented precautionary measures as advised by the Singapore Health ministry including temperature screening at Pulau Bukom and other Shell Singapore sites and work locations.

The Pulau Bukom manufacturing site is an integrated refinery and chemicals site and can process up to 500,000 barrels per day of oil.

Singapore on Friday reported 9 new cases of the virus, its biggest increase to date and bringing the total to 67. The city-state has one of the highest tallies of the disease outside China.

As MRC wrote previously, Shell Singapore restarted its naphtha cracker in Bukom Island in early December, 2019, following a two months maintenance shutdown since the beginning of October 2019. Thus, this cracker was taken off-stream for the turnaround on 1 October 2019. The cracker is able to produce 960,000 tons/year of ethylene and 550,000 tons/year of propylene.

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

According to MRC's ScanPlast report, Russia's estimated PE consumption totalled 2,093,260 tonnes in 2019, up by 6% year on year. Shipments of all PE grades increased. PE shipments rose from both domestic producers and foreign suppliers. The estimated PP consumption in the Russian market was 1,260,400 tonnes in January-December 2019, up by 4% year on year. Supply of almost all grades of propylene polymers increased, except for statistical copolymers of propylene (PP random copolymers).

Royal Dutch Shell plc is an Anglo-Dutch multinational oil and gas company headquartered in The Hague, Netherlands and with its registered office in London, United Kingdom. It is the biggest company in the world in terms of revenue and one of the six oil and gas "supermajors". Shell is vertically integrated and is active in every area of the oil and gas industry, including exploration and production, refining, distribution and marketing, petrochemicals, power generation and trading.
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- British oil giant BP PLC has left its rivals in the dust when it comes to planned emission cuts, setting an ambition to reduce the climate impact of its own oil and gas production to net-zero by 2050 - a clear step above what other supermajors have committed to, reported S&P Global.

The targets, announced by new CEO Bernard Looney on Feb. 12, mark a substantial shift for BP. All of the majors face growing pressure from environmental groups and their own shareholders, but BP had long lagged other large integrated oil and gas companies when it comes to action on climate change.

Under its last CEO, Bob Dudley, the company maintained until recently that the carbon generated by its customers was not the company's responsibility.

Now, BP has said it will eliminate all emissions from its own operations, known as scope 1 and 2, as well as those caused by the use of its own oil and gas production, known as scope 3. Although the company has released almost no detail on how it plans to get there, analysts and investors say the ambition puts it ahead of its largest peers.

The new target is "a step-change in the company's approach to climate change and sets the pace and direction of travel for the industry at large," Steve Waygood, chief responsible investment officer at Aviva Investors, an asset manager with ?457 billion under management, said in a statement.

"The onus will now be on BP to reshape its portfolio in light of a shrinking carbon budget," Waygood said.

Royal Dutch Shell PLC, TOTAL SA and Equinor ASA have already set long-term scope 3 targets but only plan to reduce the emission intensity of the products they sell.

This means they would be able to maintain or even increase oil and gas production and still hit their carbon intensity targets by adding low-carbon alternatives like solar and wind farms to their portfolio — a key point of criticism from environmental groups, who demand a cut in baseline emissions instead.

BP plans to do the same but, unlike the others, wants to also slash emissions on an absolute basis, specifically cutting out around 55 million tonnes of CO2-equivalent from its own operations, as well as 360 million tonnes released by the fuels it pumps out of the ground.

"Does that mean we'll be producing and refining hydrocarbons in 2050? Yes, very likely," Looney said in his speech. "[But] you can expect oil and gas production to decline gradually over time."

The company still targets only a 50% cut in carbon intensity for its entire scope 3 emissions, since the net-zero ambition does not cover carbon contained in the products BP sells but does not pump itself.

Those make up a larger share of the total, thanks to the company's large supply and trading operation: BP sold 8.6 million barrels of oil equivalent per day in 2018, but its own production totaled only 3.7 million barrels.

During his speech, Looney said BP's annual scope 3 emissions amounted to around 1,000 tonnes, leaving roughly 640 million tonnes unaccounted for. Analysts say not including volumes from third-party producers makes sense.

"It is appropriate to look at those emissions as external to BP," Pavel Molchanov, an analyst at Raymond James, said in an email. "Those emissions are certainly meaningful in scale, and they should be addressed by the companies supplying those fuels."

Spain's Repsol SA, a much smaller company than BP, has gone further and pledged to fully offset its scope 3 emissions, including those from fuel it buys from third parties. The company's CEO, Josu Jon Imaz, told S&P Global Market Intelligence in January that larger oil companies would face an uphill battle in emulating that level of ambition.

What BP pledged is "definitely a step ahead of Shell," said Andrew Grant, head of oil and gas at Carbon Tracker Initiative, a London-based think tank. "It's more similar to Repsol."

Environmental groups and investors demanded more detail on the plans since BP has not said how it will get there or how much it will spend to do so. Looney said concrete measures would be provided at a capital markets day in September.

BP will likely rely on carbon sinks, such as planting trees, and carbon-capture technology to decarbonize its remaining barrels. Berenberg said in a note that it was still unclear how the company would measure its reduction, including what kind of offsets would be included.

Natasha Landell-Mills, head of stewardship at UK asset manager Sarasin & Partners, called BP's announcement "disappointing" because it did not include a commitment to align spending with the goals of the Paris Agreement on climate change, as many activist shareholders demand.

So far, spending on clean energy has made up only a fraction of total investment for even the most active oil companies. A spokesperson for the company reaffirmed BP's capital expenditure plan of USD15 billion to USD17 billion per year, presented earlier this month, suggesting that there is unlikely to be an immediate shift in spending priorities.

Some also pointed out that only time will tell how much of the ambition turns into reality.

As MRC reported before, in September 2019, six world's major petrochemical companies in Flanders, Belgium, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany, and the Netherlands (Trilateral Region) announced the creation of a consortium to jointly investigate how naphtha or gas steam crackers could be operated using renewable electricity instead of fossil fuels. The Cracker of the Future consortium, which includes BASF, Borealis, BP, LyondellBasell, SABIC and Total, aims to produce base chemicals while also significantly reducing carbon emissions. The companies agreed to invest in R&D and knowledge sharing as they assess the possibility of transitioning their base chemical production to renewable electricity.

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

According to MRC's ScanPlast report, Russia's estimated PE consumption totalled 2,093,260 tonnes in 2019, up by 6% year on year. Shipments of all PE grades increased. PE shipments rose from both domestic producers and foreign suppliers. The estimated PP consumption in the Russian market was 1,260,400 tonnes in January-December 2019, up by 4% year on year. Supply of almost all grades of propylene polymers increased, except for statistical copolymers of propylene (PP random copolymers).

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