Amcor joins in health care sustainability group

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Packaging specialist Amcor Ltd. has joined the Healthcare Packaging Recycling Council (HPRC), a coalition of industry peers across health care, recycling and waste management, seeking to improve recycling of plastic products within health care, said Plasticsnews.

The company will contribute its extensive expertise in packaging design for medical devices and applications in hospitals and other treatment settings.

While the potential for recycling medical device packaging is huge, various obstacles, including current packaging designs and the practical considerations of recycling segregation systems, are standing in the way of implementation, the group says. Yet as sustainability requirements for packaging increase, the health care industry will have to find solutions in order to take advantage of this waste stream, while continuing to ensure product protection and patient safety.

According to Amcor, the health care industry poses a "unique" recycling opportunity. The company, with its global experience in developing more easily recyclable packaging, shares HPRC’s vision of improving recycling rates of healthcare plastics, commented David Clark, vice president sustainability, Amcor.

In January 2018, Melbourne, Australia-based Amcor became the first global packaging company pledging to develop all its packaging to be recyclable or reusable by 2025. Close collaboration with organizations like HPRC, as well as the Ellen MacArthur Foundation and A Circular Economy for Flexible Packaging (CEFLEX), helps to achieve that goal and increase the rates of recycling across all industries to advance a circular economy.

As per MRC's ScanPlast report, the estimated consumption of polyethylene terephthalate (PET) in Russia decreased by 16% year on year in December 2019. Russia's overall estimated PET consumption totalled 696,810 tonnes in 2019, up by 1% year on year (690,130 tonnes in 2018).

Amcor Limited is an Australian-based multinational packaging company. It operates manufacturing plants in 42 countries. It is the world's largest manufacturer of plastic bottles.
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BASF and Fabbri Group develop certified compostable cling film for fresh-food packaging

MOSCOW (MRC) -- BASF and Fabbri Group have developed a sustainable solution for cling film used in fresh-food packaging: Based on BASF’s certified compostable ecovio®, Fabbri Group produces the highly transparent stretch film Nature Fresh, said the company.

Meat, seafood as well as fruit and vegetables can be wrapped manually or with automatic packaging equipment. Industrial stretch packaging is also possible. It is the first certified compostable cling film that combines optimal breathability for an extended shelf life of fresh food with high transparency and excellent mechanical properties for automatic packaging. Nature Fresh is food-contact approved according to US and European standards.

With this property profile, the film helps to keep food fresh for a longer period of time when compared to polyvinyl chloride (PVC) alternatives used for cling film such as polyethylene (PE). As a consequence, the greenhouse gas emissions originating from food that is produced and distributed - but ultimately wasted - can be reduced. After usage Nature Fresh can be composted together with any food waste in home compost or industrial compost according to national legislation. It thus enables organic recycling and helps closing the nutrient loop towards a Circular Economy.

Cling or stretch film is a flexible thin film that is predominately used for packaging and applied in a stretch-wrap process. Wrapping can be done manually or by machines. The Nature Fresh film made of ecovio® is the certified compostable alternative to cling films made of PVC and PE so far used in fresh food packaging: Its overall performance - mechanical properties like tensile strength and elongation at break, breathability, film transparency and aesthetics like elastic recovery and anti-fogging - is comparable to films made of PVC. At the same time ecovio® shows a better water vapor transmission than PE, which is essential for optimal fresh food packaging.

In order to find the perfect match of a sustainable material with excellent packaging properties and easy wrapping, BASF and Fabbri Group joined to develop a cling film which can also be efficiently used on stretch wrapping machines. Stefano Mele, CEO at Fabbri Group: “The Fabbri new way to sustainability is combining our Nature Fresh solution with our new Automac NF wrappers so that the food packaging industry can benefit twice: from an innovative cling film and easy film processing. In this way our certified compostable cling film can be used together with trays and labels of the same kind in order to have a complete compostable packaging.” Fabbri Group offers Nature Fresh in four different formats: as rolls for manual or automatic packaging machines in industrial food packaging, for cutter boxes in hotels, restaurants and catering services, as jumbo rolls for converters as well as rolls for end consumer hand-wrapping applications.

As MRC wrote earlier, BASF, the world's petrochemical major, has restarted its No. 1 steam cracker following a maintenance turnaorund. Thus, the company resumed operations at the plant on September 30, 2019. The plant was shut for maintenance in mid-August, 2019. Located at Ludwigshafen in Germany, the No. 1 cracker has an ethylene production capacity of 235,000 mt/year and a propylene production capacity of 125,000 mt/year.

Ethylene and propylene are feedstocks for producing 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.

BASF is the leading chemical company. It produces a wide range of chemicals, for example solvents, amines, resins, glues, electronic-grade chemicals, industrial gases, basic petrochemicals and inorganic chemicals. The most important customers for this segment are the pharmaceutical, construction, textile and automotive industries. BASF generated sales of around EUR63 billion in 2018.
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Viridor and Procter & Gamble agree R-HDPE supply contract

MOSCOW (MRC) -- UK recycling and waste management major Viridor has signed a five-year contract with Procter & Gamble (P&G) for the supply of recycled high density polyethylene (R-HDPE), said the company.

The companies, both founding partners of the UK Plastics Pact, are committed to inspiring positive action on the environment and driving circular change.

Consumers will see evidence of this on their supermarket shelves in P&G’s Ariel laundry product range as previously announced which aims to reach up to 50% recycled content in its liquid bottles as of 2020.

Viridor’s supply of HDPE (high-density polyethylene) to P&G will save the equivalent of 200 million bottles of virgin plastic over five years.

P&G Purchases Group Manager Adam Selby commented: "Viridor is an established innovator in the area of sustainable packaging. This collaboration accelerates P&G’s 2030 goal to reduce our use of virgin petroleum plastic in packaging by 50%.

"As a founding member of The Alliance to End Plastic Waste, we are committed to helping to minimise and manage plastic waste and promote solutions like this for used plastics."

However, European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) contamination restrictions on food-grade approved material sourcing mean that only the UK is able to currently produce food-grade R-HDPE.

UK milk bottles are manufactured from HDPE – in the rest of Europe they are manufactured from polyethylene terephthalate (PET) – allowing a separated stream of post-consumer material suitable for food-grade production – although this is limited to 100,000 tonnes/year.

Food-grade pellets are structurally short. Although players in mainland Europe are researching sorting techniques to produce food-grade pellets, most remain cost prohibitive and are not expected to enter the market in 2020. As a result, cosmetics and domestic goods packaging producers are having to turn to other grades of R-HDPE, such as natural.

Long-testing cycles of around 18 months have so far prevented a sharp increase in consumption. Testing cycles are expected to increase in 2020 and consumption is expected to rise as a result. Packaging firms have a preference for natural material because of its higher attractiveness to end-use consumers when on the shelf, and because it is easier to masterbatch. As a result of increased packaging consumption, 2019 saw prices trade above virgin for the first time.

As MRC informed earlier, Karpatneftekhim (Kalush, Ivano-Frankivsk region), Ukraine"s largest petrochemical plant, intends to resume its high density polyethylene (HDPE) production in the third decade of March after a forced outage. The plant"s representative and customers said the Ukrainian producer plans to launch its HDPE production on 20 March. The shutdown of polyethylene (PE) production took place in early January and was caused by high prices of material, which did not match the world prices of polymer.

The situation in the feedstocks markets has changed dramatically for the past several week, thus, oil prices fell significantly, which suggests a proportional reduction in net cost of PE production. As reported earlier, Karpatneftekhim"s overall HDPE output exceeded 93,000 tonnes in 2019, up by 4% year on year.
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Following coronavirus scare, Chinaplas 2020 rescheduled to August

MOSCOW (MRC) -- The next Chinaplas trade show will take place Aug. 3-6 in Shanghai, show organizer Adsale Exhibition Services Ltd. announced Feb. 19, said Plasticsnews.

The show originally was scheduled for April 21-24, but it was delayed because of the coronavirus epidemic. The venue for the fair has not changed; it will be at the NECC in Shanghai. Adsale General Manager Ada Leung said that companies "have already resumed work and manufacturing" after the coronavirus scare.

Leung also noted the role that plastics have taken during the epidemic, saying that the materials are used in medical protective clothes, medical masks, goggles, gloves, medical equipment, pharmaceutical packaging and disinfection supplies.

The novel coronavirus first appeared in the Chinese city of Wuhan in late 2019 and began to spread in January. Hong Kong-based Adsale first announced on Feb. 5 that the 2020 show would be delayed. This is not the first time that Chinaplas has been delayed as a result of a health scare. During the SARS outbreak in 2003, Chinaplas was postponed from June until December.

Chinaplas will likely be the largest plastics industry exhibition this year. Last year's Chinaplas, held in Guangzhou, reported an estimated attendance of 163,000. The last time the show was in Shanghai, in 2018, it drew an estimated 180,000 attendees.

Chinaplas is held annually and typically has alternated between Shanghai and Guangzhou. The 2021 show, however, will be held April 13-16 in Shenzhen. Adsale has said that the Guangzhou venue has become too small for Chinaplas.

As MRC informed earlier, the upcoming edition of the Chinaplas trade show, one of the world’s largest plastics and rubber trade fairs, has been postponed indefinitely as a result of the deadly coronavirus outbreak.

As it was written earlier, supply chain disruption from the clampdowns on the spread of the coronavirus will cause major headaches for chemical producers in the coming days and weeks. China’s polyolefin suppliers have cut their post-holiday production due to logistics restrictions amid authorities’ efforts to contain the coronavirus outbreak. Domestic inventories are high as the plants did not stop production during the Lunar New Year holiday period, which started on 24 January, with most storage warehouses now full.

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).
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Sinopec Zhenhai Petrochemical to shut CDU and FCC for maintenance in mid-March

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Sinopec Zhenhai Petrochemical, the subsidiary of one of the world's largest energy and chemical companies - Sinopec, will shut its 8 million mt/year CDU and 1.8 million mt/year FCC over mid-March to early May 2020 for maintenance, reported S&P Global.

As MRC informed before, Sinopec Qilu Petrochemical, another subsidiary of Sinopec, plans to shut the cracker unit in Tianjin in northeast China for scheduled repairs on 15 June, 2020. This cracking unit with a capacity of 900,000 tonnes of ethylene per year and 480,000 tonnes of propylene tons per year will be closed for scheduled repairs until 24 June, 2020.

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).

Sinopec corp. is one of the world's largest integrated energy and chemical companies. Business Sinopec Corp. includes oil and gas exploration, production and transportation of oil and gas, oil refining, petrochemical production, production of mineral fertilizers and other chemical products. In terms of refining capacity, Sinopec Corp. ranks second in the world, in terms of ethylene capacity - fourth.
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