MOSCOW (MRC) -- At a Strategy Update meeting on April 2, Arkema (Paris:AKE) presents its ambition to become a world leader in Specialty Materials realigned around three coherent businesses with attractive growth prospects: Adhesive Solutions, Advanced Materials, and Coating Solutions, said the company.
The Group unveils its roadmap and its objectives for 2024 at this event. In the context of Covid-19, Arkema also provides an update on the management and the consequences of this unprecedented health crisis.
While the management of the crisis related to Covid-19 requires everybody to be mobilized -priority being given to the health and safety of its employees while supporting its customers and its other stakeholders to the best of its abilities-, Arkema decided to maintain its Strategy Update meeting today to share its vision and unveil its strong ambitions for the mid-term.
Since 2006, the Group has undertaken an in-depth transformation that has enabled it to progressively develop leading positions in Specialty Materials through targeted investments, an innovation policy focused on the major sustainable development trends, and pro-active portfolio management. These activities now account for almost 80% of its sales.
Today, Arkema is entering a new phase in this transformation. This is based on three coherent and complementary divisions focused on Specialty Materials, namely Adhesive Solutions, Advanced Materials, and Coating Solutions. In a world in which demand for sustainable and high performance materials is growing, Arkema enjoys a unique positioning around those three growth platforms. These combine real in-house innovation expertise, strong commercial and industrial synergies, and a common approach to serving customers in sustainable and growing markets.
Last October, Arkema announced the proposed divestment of the business to SK for an enterprise value of 335-million. Part of the PMMA (polymethyl methacrylate) business unit, functional polyolefins comprises ethylene, copolymers and terpolymers.
As MRC wrote before, South Koreaпї's SK Global Chemical had restarted its naphtha cracker in late January 2018, after a brief but unplanned one-day shutdown. The 660,000 tonnes-per-year (tpy) naphtha cracker was expected to be operating normally the following day after the restart. Located in Ulsan, South Korea, the No. 2 cracker has a production capacity of 690,000 mt/year. SK Global Chemical also operates a smaller 200,000 tpy cracker.
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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