PVC prices rose by Rb8,000/tonne and more in December in Russia

MOSCOW (MRC) - Record high prices for suspension polyvinyl chloride (SPVC) in the world over the last few years continue to put pressure on prices in Russia. Russian producers announced a further price increase on average by Rb8,000/tonne for December shipments, according to ICIS-MRC Price report.

PVC shortages have been reported in many regions of the world since summer, and prices have broken records over the past few years in November. The Russian market also does not stand aside from the global trend. Contrary to the experience of previous years, the price of domestic PVC increased seriously in October - November, and there was a noticeable tight supply in the market.

PVC supply increased for December shipment, and producers announced a more significant increase in PVC prices than in previous months. The demand for SPVC from Russian converters in the autumn months was at a good level, and given the high level of capacity utilisation of domestic PVC producers, it was not enough to fully meet all the needs. This was partly due to, among other things, the almost complete absence of imports.

The situation changed in December, but not dramatically. Converters' demand for PVC continues to decline due to the seasonal factor. Some converters reported that the volume of purchases from them was higher in comparison with the last year.

PVC supply from some Russian producers has increased this month, but there is no need to speak of a surplus.
Even taking into account the new increase in Russian PVC, imports were still significantly more expensive.

And in the next few months, this situation is unlikely to change, especially since in December world prices rose again.
The prices of Russian PVC reached another historical record in December, which is not typical for the market, since in the previous several years in winter the prices reached their lowest values for the year.

At the same time, there is no understanding of what trend will be in prices for January. Negotiations over November shipments of Russian PVC began at the end of last week, with Russian PVC with K64/67 being negotiated in the range of Rb95,000 - 97,000/tonne CPT Moscow, including VAT, for quantities of less than 500 tonnes.

MRC

Neste to permanently close refinery ops in Naantali, Finland by the end of March 2021

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Finnish renewable diesel producer Neste has announced plans to close its refinery operations in Naantali, Finland, as the demand for fossil oil products drops, said the company.

In September, the company revealed plans to restructure its refinery operations in Porvoo and Naantali to enhance the competitiveness of the oil products business. Neste has now has decided to shut down its Naantali operations by the end of March next year. following the finalisation of the co-operation negotiations.

According to the company, the COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the fall in demand for oil products and is not expected to recover to previous levels. It will now focus on the terminal and harbour operations at the Naantali refinery and will also renew its operating model for its oil products.

As part of the new plans, Neste’s Porvoo refinery will be transformed to co-process renewable and circular raw materials. Neste president and CEO Peter Vanacker said: “We want to improve our competitiveness and maintain refining operations and related strategic capabilities in Finland.

“The changes will support the transformation of the Porvoo refinery into a leading sustainable, safe, and efficient refinery, enabled by our highly innovative and efficient Neste people.” The restructuring process is expected to result in annual fixed cost savings of nearly EUR50m for Neste and the termination of approximately 370 positions.

However, the redundancies are lower that the previous estimate of 470, when the restructuring plans for its refinery operations were announced. Neste procurement, HSSEQ and human resources senior vice president Hannele Jakosuo-Jansson said: “As part of our transformation, we will also renew the Oil Products operating model.

“As a consequence, some of the jobs will cease to exist but completely new jobs will also be created. In the co-operation negotiations, we agreed on comprehensive change support measures which will help our personnel in adapting to the change."

As MRC informed earlier, Royal DSM, a global science-based company in Nutrition, Health and Sustainable Living, has announced that it will start a strategic partnership with Neste, the world’s leading producer of renewable diesel and sustainable aviation fuel and a forerunner as provider of renewable and circular solutions for the chemical industry, to enable the production of high performance polymers.

As MRC informed earlier, in September, 2020, DSM formed a 50/50 joint venture (JV) with VDL Groep (Eindhoven, Netherlands), called Dutch PPE Solutions, to produce medical facemasks and establish the first permanent production of critical facemask components in the Netherlands. The companies are investing several million euros to purchase manufacturing equipment and build manufacturing facilities to produce meltblown polypropylene (PP), the critical material layer in medical facemasks that filters viruses, and make medical masks.

According to MRC's ScanPlast report, PP shipments to the Russian market reached 880,130 tonnes in the nine months of 2020 (calculated using the formula: production minus exports plus imports, excluding producers' inventories as of 1 January, 2020). Supply increased exclusively of PP random copolymer.
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Repurposing used plastic into road infrastructure could take all waste PET of U.S.

MOSCOW (MRC) -- The founder of a company that worked for years to research ways to repurpose plastic waste into roads and develop a product said that if its composite asphalt pavement use were to extend beyond parts of Los Angeles across the U.S., it could eventually use up all the waste PET in the country, said Hydrocarbonprocessing.

The product is an asphalt mix technology already put to use in California that may not just cut plastic waste in the U.S., a pressing need after China banned such imports in 2018, but also yield strong, flexible pavement while improving roads and helping cut carbon emissions in the process. The product has already proved viable, and there are several projects ahead, said Sean Weaver, TechniSoil Industrial president.

"Big picture, a city like Los Angeles is able to gather their plastic waste and give that to us, we convert it using the glycolysis to react it into our polymer, and then we recycle their roads with it," he said. "If we fully adapted our system throughout all 50 states we can potentially take all the waste PET from the U.S.," he added.

The plastic composite pavement has the flexibility of plastic but also the compressive strength of concrete. "Plastic has incredible tensile and elongation properties which create a strength and flexibility far superior to bitumen,” he said. The result are flatter roads with less potholes, he added.

The American Chemistry Council (ACC) on Oct. 1 celebrated legislation approved in the Fall 2020 that supports “studying innovative ways to repurpose used plastics." The studies are to find “ways to repurpose plastics in infrastructure projects, such as roads and bridges" as part of the Save Our Seas Act, it added.

Weaver said the research that led to TechniSoil’s product goes back to 2012. "We came up with a polymer substitute for bitumen that performed really well with 100% recycled asphalt, so in 2015 we started a five-year program with the University of Nevada, Reno to evaluate the pavement," he added.

"We recycled a road in 2015 using this material, and we evaluated and studied that road through 2019, and everything looked very good. The road performed better than new asphalt," Weaver said.

China’s January 2018 ban on the import of eight types of plastic waste turned into an opportunity. “In 2019 the Department of Energy (DOE) reached out to me about the study and said hey, since China stopped taking our plastic in 2018, the DOE is looking for ways that businesses or industries could incorporate large amounts of the U.S. waste plastic back to some valuable end use,” Weaver said.

Then “the City of Los Angeles heard about our technology and were very keen to be the first city to run trial and testing,” Weaver said. “They conducted 1,400 tests over the course of three months in 2018. They got very good findings in the labs and that resulted in three test sections, with the last test section on a public road,” he said.

That test section “turned out really well and much stronger than their best traditional asphalt roads,” he said. “They are now looking at utilizing our technology to recycle their bus lanes initially, and moving to other lanes after that,” he added.

“Traditionally, you re-melt the plastic into another bottle, but every time you re-melt, you degrade the quality” so a plastic bottle can only be recycled a maximum of 10 times, he said. “So what do you do with the plastic once it’s distressed past the point of recyclability?“ he added. Chemical recycling can then turn the degraded plastic back into its original elements, he added.

“So we’re able to capture 100% of the monomers out of plastic and incorporate that into our new binder,” he said.
Currently the U.S. recycles 26% to 30% of PET that it produces, he said. “We see our road system in the U.S. as one of the few applications that is big enough to make long-term, productive use of recycled PET,” Weaver said.

“Polyester and PET are the same thing,” he added. There is potential to eventually also use other PET sources including that in other packaging, and perhaps other plastic. "We know the technology can accommodate other types of plastic in pelletized form. This is a priority for us to explore as the technology continues to develop,” Weaver added.

“When used to produce pavement in the laboratory it creates life cycle gains 6 to 13 times longer than traditional asphalt. In the field we’re conservatively claiming two to three times the cycle of traditional hot mix asphalt,” Weaver said. The composite “has the flexibility of asphalt but the compressive strength of concrete,” he added. This is because of plastic’s tensile and elongation properties, he added.

As per MRC ScanPlast, Russian PET chips market revived in the second half of November. Most producers reported a limited volume of free PET in the spot market. The situation was mixed in the market for finished products and the opinions of processors about the demand for preforms in November differed greatly. Some of them reported good sales, while others reported very low consumption.

MRC

BASF to purse antitrust claim against Ingevity related to emissions-control patent case

MOSCOW (MRC) -- BASF says it will pursue antitrust claims in a US court in Delaware related to Ingevity’s business practices in the evaporative emissions control market. The case concerns BASF’s EvapTrap-branded scrubbers for evaporative emissions control, accoring to Chemweek.

“BASF Corporation is continuing to pursue an antitrust counterclaim against Ingevity Corporation,” BASF says. “This counterclaim is related to Ingevity Corporation’s business practices that have limited BASF’s successful entry into the market with its EvapTrap™ XC scrubbers.”

On 17 November, a US court in Delaware sided with BASF in a related patent case, ruling Ingevity’s patent for canister system used in evaporative emissions control applications invalid. The court decision followed an International Trade Commission finding earlier this year. Ingevity says it will appeal the decision, and that the decision will have “limited impact” on the company’s financial results.

As MRC reported previously, German chemicals maker BASF said in early November it had put a project to build a petrochemicals complex in India worth up to USD4 billion on hold due to the economic uncertainty caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. BASF signed a memorandum of understanding with Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC), Adani Group and Borealis AG in October 2019 to evaluate a collaboration to build the chemical site in Mundra, in India’s Gujarat state.

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

ccording to MRC's ScanPlast report, Russia's estimated PE consumption totalled 1,594,510 tonnes in the first nine months of 2020, up by 1% year on year. Only high denstiy polyethylene (HDPE) shipments increased. At the same time, PP shipments to the Russian market reached 880,130 tonnes in the nine months of 2020 (calculated using the formula: production minus exports plus imports, exluding producers' inventories as of 1 January, 2020). Supply increased exclusively of PP random copolymer.

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.
MRC

Celanese launches POM ECO-B as mass-balance bio-based option for existing products

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Demand for materials with renewable content and lower environmental impact is growing across customer segments. Celanese Corporation, a global chemical and specialty materials company, has launched a sustainable polyacetal (POM) product offering known as POM ECO-B to support the growing demand, as per the company's press release.

POM ECO-B allows customers to realize reduction in carbon dioxide emission in their end-use products and advance toward their renewable content goals. Celanese believes that this offering has a strong value proposition for customers in the automotive, consumer products and medical device industries where footprint reduction or renewable content is important.

Celanese’s POM ECO-B contains up to 97% bio-content via a mass-balance approach as certified by the International Sustainability and Carbon Certification (ISCC+). It reduces carbon dioxide footprint per kilogram of POM polymer by more than half without any impact on properties or need for requalification.

“Celanese is committed to enhancing our specialty materials product offerings and capabilities through ongoing investments in sustainable product developments. Today’s launch of Celanese POM ECO-B is yet another example of our focus on developing functionalized grades that meet rigorous technical specifications while offering eco-friendly content options for customers,” said Tom Kelly, Senior Vice President, Engineered Materials, Celanese.

As MRC informed previously, in October, 2020, Celanese (Dallas, Texas) announced plans to add a 15,000-metric tons/year line for the production of GUR ultra-high molecular weight polyethylene (UHMWPE) at its facility in Bishop, Texas. Startup is expected by.the beginning of 2022.

According to MRC"s ScanPlast report, Russia's estimated PE consumption totalled 1,594,510 tonnes in the first nine months of 2020, up by 1% year on year. Only high denstiy polyethylene (HDPE) shipments increased.

Celanese Corporation is a global technology leader in the production of differentiated chemistry solutions and specialty materials used in most major industries and consumer applications. Based in Dallas, Celanese employs approximately 7,700 employees worldwide and had 2019 net sales of USD6.3 billion.
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