Expoplast 2020 cancelled, replacement virtual event scheduled for November-December

MOSCOW (MRC) -- The Expoplast trade show in Montreal, originally scheduled for Oct. 7-8, 2020, has been cancelled, and a week-long virtual event will be held instead, in late November and early December, said Canplastrics.

The next Expoplast in-person show is now scheduled for Nov. 9-10, 2022, at the Palais des congres de Montreal. Expoplast is part of the ADM Expo Montreal, a series of co-located shows at the Palais des congres de Montreal. The other shows include PackEx Montreal, ATX, Design & Manufacturing, and Powder & Bulk Solids. All of these shows have been cancelled as well.

"The event organizers of Expoplast, part of ADM Expo Montreal, have announced that after close consultation with our industry partners, it’s in the best interest of our exhibitors, attendees, and the surrounding community to cancel the 2020 in-person event, and shift to a digital format, Virtual Engineering Week taking place this winter,” said Tam Nguyen, PR specialist with show organizer Informa Markets.

Virtual Engineering Week will take place Nov. 30 – Dec. 4, 2020. “It was created to foster meaningful and productive engagement within the full design, engineering, and manufacturing communities,” Nguyen continued. “This week-long virtual event will showcase exhibitors from all six of Informa Markets’ engineering events, and feature a full line-up of digital activities, including keynotes, education sessions, product showcases, and networking opportunities."

More information about participating in the virtual event will be announced shortly, she added.

As MRC informed earlier, Russia's output of chemical products rose by 4.4% year on year in May 2020 . Thus, production of basic chemicals increased year on year by 5.4% in the first five months of 2020. According to the Federal State Statistics Service of the Russian Federation, polymers in primary form accounted for the greatest increase in the output in January-May. Production of benzene was 110,000 tonnes in May 2020, which equalled the figure a month earlier. Overall output of this product reached 615,000 tonnes over the stated period, up by 1.7% year on year.
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- International Recycling Group (IRG), a privately-held start-up company that’s planning to build a large plastics recycling plant in Erie, Pa., has announced an initial round of USD9 million in investments from Erie Insurance and plastics packaging supplier The Plastek Group, said Canplastics.

In an Aug. 19 statement, IRG said the USD100-million facility in Erie will be the first of its kind – “a mega-sized, all-plastics SuperPRF (plastics recovery facility)” – and that Erie Insurance’s Erie Insurance Opportunity Zone investment will support plant development, including engineering design, site selection, and contract work.

Separately, Erie-based Plastek has purchased an equity stake in IRG’s parent company, GreenSteel LLC. IRG says it has designed a concept for a mega-scale plant that uses smart machines to separate and sort residential, commercial, and industrial plastics from homes and businesses;, and that this will allow the facility to process a wide range of resin types and forms, and dramatically reducing the amount of material that enters landfill.

The company reports that because recycling currently relies mostly on hand sorting and delivering waste plastics to the bag or bin, the plastics are too often combined with other types of non-recyclable material. This causes problems for waste haulers and impedes municipal efforts to recover more re-usable plastics.

"In our view, the future of post-use plastics collection and sortation will involve large-scale facilities that have a sustainable non-landfill solution for the non-marketable material,” IRG said. “Plastics processors will need to be able to handle all plastics – not just containers – so that more plastic is diverted from the trash and driven to recycling."

IRG’s non-marketable material will be repurposed into its proprietary iron reducing agent for use in steel manufacturing. Over 50 manufacturing jobs are expected to be created by 2022, the expected plant start-up date. Future expansion may increase employment ultimately to over 150. The company is currently considering several available sites with close-proximity to highway and rail lines.

When completed, the plant will be the largest and most technologically sophisticated plastics recycling plant in the world, IRG said, automatically sorting over 275,000 tons of mixed-waste plastic material per year in phase one. It will be supporting Erie’s, and the region’s, plastics manufacturers with recycled material to incorporate into their products.

According to MRC's DataScope report, PE imports to Russia dropped in January-June 2020 by 7% year on year to 328,000 tonnes. High density polyethylene (HDPE) accounted for the main decrease in imports. At the same time, PP imports into Russia rose in the first six months of 2020 by 21% year on year to 105,300 tonnes. Propylene homopolymer (homopolymer PP) accounted for the main increase in imports.
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Crude oil futures were lower in mid-morning trade in Asia on Aug.19 after American Petroleum Institute data released late Aug.18 showed a surprisingly large build in gasoline inventories even as US commercial crude supplies fell for a consecutive fourth week, said S&P Global.

At 10:32 am Singapore time (0232 GMT), the ICE Brent October crude futures were down 27 cents/b (0.59%) from the Aug.18 settle at $45.19/b, while NYMEX September light sweet crude contract was down by 18 cents/b (0.42%) at USD42.71/b.

"API reported a big build in gasoline inventories, which has somewhat taken the edge off the bullish market sentiment," Stephen Innes, chief global markets strategist at AxiCorp, said in a note Aug.19. "Summertime builds are never received well, but particularly towards the end of this summer as there is some concern the virus could rage again during colder winter months in the northern hemisphere and further crimp gasoline demand," he added.

Meanwhile, US commercial crude inventories were reported to have declined by 4.26 million barrels for the week ending Aug.14, slightly higher than the 3.8 million barrels drawdown estimated on Aug.17.

Notably, it will be the fourth consecutive week of drawdown for US commercial crude inventories if the official weekly US inventory report due for release by the Energy Information Administration later in the day confirms the API industry report on Aug.18.

Meanwhile, the continued spread of COVID-19 worldwide remains the key drag on the short-term demand outlook. Global COVID-19 infections exceeded 22 million case counts while total deaths reached 779,443, latest data from John Hopkins University showed.

A resurgence of infections in major European economies also reignited concerns that global economic recovery will continue to slow as countries tightened pandemic containment restrictions. The number of new cases in Germany reached four-month highs on Aug.17, while Spain registers 16,000 new infections in three days, according to media reports.

Elsewhere, members of the OPEC+ alliance will be meeting to discuss about compliance and compensation cuts through September for members who failed to abide by their output quotas from May to July in the Joint Ministerial Monitoring Committee meeting.

Earlier this year, BP said the deadly coronavirus outbreak could cut global oil demand growth by 40 per cent in 2020, putting pressure on Opec producers and Russia to curb supplies to keep prices in check.

And 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 DataScope report, PE imports to Russia dropped in January-June 2020 by 7% year on year to 328,000 tonnes. High density polyethylene (HDPE) accounted for the main decrease in imports. At the same time, PP imports into Russia rose in the first six months of 2020 by 21% year on year to 105,300 tonnes. Propylene homopolymer (homopolymer PP) accounted for the main increase in imports.
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- US crude oil stockpiles fell in the second week of August even as net imports jumped sharply, while fuel demand dipped as well, reported Reuters with reference to the US Energy Information Administration's statement.

Crude inventories fell by 1.6 million barrels in the week to Aug. 14 to 512.5 million barrels, less than analysts’ expectations in a Reuters poll for a 2.7 million-barrel drop.

Net US crude imports rose by 1.1 million barrels per day to 3.6 MMbpd, the EIA said.

Fuel demand dropped by more than 2 MMbpd to 17.2 MMbpd in terms of product supplied. Overall fuel demand is down 14% from the year-ago period over the last four weeks.

As the summer driving season comes to a close, overall fuel demand tends to decline.

Prices rose briefly following the report. U.S. crude futures were down 26 cents, or 0.6%, to USD42.63 a barrel by 11:01 a.m. ET (1501 GMT), while Brent dropped 37 cents to USD45.09 a barrel.

Refinery crude runs fell by 171,000 bpd in the last week, EIA said, while refinery utilization rates fell by 0.1 percentage point.

US gasoline stocks fell by 3.3 million barrels to 243.8 million barrels, the EIA said, compared with analysts’ expectations for a 1.1 million-barrel drop.

Distillate stockpiles, which include diesel and heating oil, rose by 152,000 barrels, versus expectations for a 557,000-barrel drop. Overall distillate stockpiles sit at 177.8 million barrels, just off a 38-year-high set last month.

“It is concerning that distillate inventories continue to remain at very high levels as refiners blend excess jet fuel supplies into diesel,” said Andrew Lipow, president at Lipow Oil Associates in Houston.

As MRC wrote previously, US crude oil inventories moved sharply lower during the week ended July 24 as exports and refinery demand climbed to multi-month highs, US Energy Information Administration data showed July 29.. Commercial crude stocks fell 10.61 million barrels to 525.97 million barrels last week, EIA data showed. While the draw pushed stockpiles to 14-week lows, they remained more than 17% above the five-year average for this time of year. The inventory draw was concentrated on the US Gulf Coast, where stocks fell 10.46 million barrels to 295.51 million barrels, and on the US West Coast, where stocks fell 1.7 million barrels to 52.75 million barrels, the lowest since mid-March.

Earlier this year, BP said the deadly coronavirus outbreak could cut global oil demand growth by 40 per cent in 2020, putting pressure on Opec producers and Russia to curb supplies to keep prices in check.

And 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 DataScope report, PE imports to Russia dropped in January-June 2020 by 7% year on year to 328,000 tonnes. High density polyethylene (HDPE) accounted for the main decrease in imports. At the same time, PP imports into Russia rose in the first six months of 2020 by 21% year on year to 105,300 tonnes. Propylene homopolymer (homopolymer PP) accounted for the main increase in imports.
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- The plastics industry requires a paradigm shift towards an absolute decoupling of materials consumption from growth of the economy if it is to achieve sustainability targets, according to new research from research firm Wood Mackenzie, said Canplastics.

"This shift, a term we call the materials transition, is the process through which we account for – and seek to minimise – the costs of extracting and disposing of raw materials consumed in the global economy,” said Guy Bailey, Wood Mackenzie’s head of intermediates and applications. “The materials transition is driven by societal concern, regulatory interventions and technological innovation."

If all plastic packaging companies put the materials transition at the heart of their sustainability strategies, what would this mean in terms of plastic production and waste generation? Wood Mackenzie ran two scenarios focused on the major packaging polymers – polyethylene (PE), polypropylene (PP) and polyethylene terephthalate (PET) – to answer this question. A “Current Path” scenario represents the world if it continues as it is today, while a “Sustainable Future” scenario sees more stringent legislation implemented to incentives companies to be ambitious.

Under Wood Mackenzie’s “Current Path” scenario, the global recycling rate for the selected polymers more than doubles between now and 2040, rising from 17% to 38% of polymer produced for packaging applications.

Under Wood Mackenzie’s “Sustainable Future” scenario, there’s a significant increase in volumes of packaging going through mechanical recycling processes, and significant investment in chemical recycling technologies and capacities. Faster growth in the recycling of flexible, multi-material and coloured packaging follows.

The cumulative impact of these changes is another near doubling of the recycling rate for the observed packaging polymers, rising to approximately 67%. In 2040 alone, this results in an additional 53 million tonnes of packaging plastic prevented from going into landfill, energy recovery or unmanaged waste streams in comparison to the ‘Current Path’ scenario. Cumulatively, from 2020 to 2040, this rises to 382 million tonnes.

"It’s clear to see that chemical recycling has the potential to significantly increase recycling levels,” Bailey said. “However, the impact of this on the value chain will depend on how circular the recycling chain is. For instance, how much recycled plastic is ‘downcycled’ into non-circular products – such as reclaimed plastic bottles recycled into polyester fibres – and the precise split between recycling routes."

According to MRC's DataScope report, PE imports to Russia dropped in January-June 2020 by 7% year on year to 328,000 tonnes. High density polyethylene (HDPE) accounted for the main decrease in imports. At the same time, PP imports into Russia rose in the first six months of 2020 by 21% year on year to 105,300 tonnes. Propylene homopolymer (homopolymer PP) accounted for the main increase in imports.

MRC