Sabic opened PP compounding line in Belgium

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Chemical maker Sabic has started up its new polypropylene (PP) compounding line in Genk, Belgium, said Canplastics.

The new line is an addition to the company’s existing production capacity for Sabic PP compounds at the Genk site, and will use raw materials from Sabic’s PP plants at Gelsenkirchen, Germany, and Geleen, The Netherlands.

According to Sabic officials, the plant has been equipped with large-scale extrusion technology "to meet the market’s growing demand for high-quality, high-performance PP compounds with reliable and consistent supply."

"This investment is part of our business strategy for growth through advanced PP compound solutions designed to help customers develop next-generation lightweight applications in industries such as automotive, home appliances, and consumer goods,” said Lada Kurelec, Sabic’s general manager for PP and E4P business. “The added capacity also enhances our on-site production flexibility for introducing innovative new PP polymer technology without compromising the security of supply of established compound products."

As per MRC, Sabic Innovative Plastics, a subsidiary of the largest Saudi petrochemical company - Sabic, on 27 September closed production at its polycarbonate (PC) plant in Mount Vernon (Mount Vernon, Indiana, USA) for planned preventive measures. Maintenance at this enterprise with a capacity of 245,000 tonnes of PC per year continued until 11 October.

MRC informed earlier, BASF SE (Germany), Sabic (Saudi Arabia) and Linde (Germany) signed an agreement to develop electrically heated cracking furnaces. Steam cracking units require significant amounts of energy to break down hydrocarbons into olefins and aromatics.

Sabic is a diversified company manufacturing chemicals, industrial polymers, fertilizers and metals. It is the largest state-owned company in Saudi Arabia. Sabic is currently the world's second largest ethylene glycol producer, the third largest polyethylene producer, and the fourth largest polypropylene producer. Sabic cut its 2015 net profit by 7% to SR23.43 billion (Saudi reais), equivalent to USD6.24 billion, amid lower average selling prices and increased sales.
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MOSCOW (MRC) -- Ineos Olefins and Polymers Europe have joined the UK-based Nextloopp project, which is aiming to launch the first food-grade mechanically recycled polypropylene (R-PP) material from post-consumer waste in Europe, said the company.

INEOS will be at the centre of an important two-year project that will inform the building of a demonstration plant in the UK to produce 10,000 tonnes per year of food-grade recycled polypropylene.

From its manufacturing base in Grangemouth, Scotland, and extensive product and technical expertise across its European operations, Ineos will help tailor food-grade recycled polypropylene to the precise specification of converters by blending it with virgin polypropylene to modify its mechanical and processing properties. It will also introduce processing aids to help converters to meet the exacting requirements of Brand Owners.

The project aims to validate the food-grade recycled polypropylene manufacturing process and its commercial viability, with the aim of receiving acceptance from the UK’s Food Standard Agency (FSA) and European equivalent (EFSA).

The Nextloopp project had initially targeted a launch date during the second half of 2022. However, delays resulting from the impact of COVID-19 and Brexit have pushed back the project completion date by approximately six months, in to 2023.

The group plans to overcome this challenge for R-PP by using marker technology to separate out the food-contact origin material at sorting and separation stage. The process will include a decontamination stage to comply with both EFSA and US Food and Drug Administration standards.

As per MRC, Ineos plans to invest EUR2 billion (USD2.3 billion) in renewable hydrogen production across Europe in the next 10 years, including a 100-MW plant in Germany. Ineos plans to build production facilities in Norway, Germany and Belgium, with additional investment in the UK and France.

Also, Ineos Styrolution, a global leader in styrenics, has launched its first specialty acrylonitrile-butadiene-styrene (ABS) with recycled content. The new specialty AMOBS grades, NovodurECO and Novodur ECO High Heat will contain up to 70% and 50% mechanically recycled post-consumer waste respectively.
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Plastic Energy and TotalEnergies have announced a new agreement to promote the development of advanced plastic recycling, said Hydrocarbonprocessing.

Under this agreement, Plastic Energy plans to build a second advanced recycling plant in Sevilla, Spain, in addition to their existing operational plant, which will transform end-of-life plastic waste into a recycled feedstock called TACOIL using Plastic Energy’s patented recycling technology. TotalEnergies will convert this raw material into virgin-quality polymers, which can be used for food-grade packaging.

The plant will process and convert 33,000 tons of post-consumer end-of-life plastic waste yearly, that would otherwise be destined for landfill or incineration. The plant is expected to become operational in early 2025, with TACOIL to be used for the manufacturing of high-quality polymers in TotalEnergies’ European-based production units, following a successful processing experimentation in TotalEnergies’ petrochemical platform in Antwerp. With identical properties to virgin ones, the recycled polymers will be suitable for use in food-grade applications, such as flexible and rigid food packaging containers.

Plastic Energy and TotalEnergies are both firmly committed to develop plastics recycling to address the issue of plastic waste, and to build a circular economy in Europe and globally. In line with this commitment, TotalEnergies and Plastic Energy have announced in September 2020 a JV to build a plastic waste conversion facility with a capacity of 15,000 tpy at the TotalEnergies Grandpuits zero-crude platform in France. The project is expected to be operational in 2023.

Additionally, Plastic Energy, Freepoint Eco-Systems and TotalEnergies announced a strategic partnership in October 2021 for a similar recycling plant in Texas, U.S. This plant, which is a JV between Plastic Energy and Freepoint Eco-systems, will have the capacity to recycle 33,000 tons of plastic waste per year, and is expected to be operational by mid-2024. Under the agreement, TACOIL will be converted by TotalEnergies in its Texas-based production units.

This new project with Plastic Energy in Spain follows two collaboration projects already announced in France and the U.S. Those projects contribute to addressing the challenge of the circular economy and to our ambition of producing 30% recycled and renewable polymers by 2030,” said Valerie Goff, Senior Vice President, Polymers at TotalEnergies.

As MRC informed before, TotalEnergies has recently inaugurated the extension of Synova in Normandy, the French leader in recycled polypropylene production. TotalEnergies is therefore doubling its mechanical recycling production capacity for recycled polymers, to meet growing demand for sustainable polymers from customers, such as Automotive Manufacturer (Auto OEM) and the construction industry.

As per MRC, TotalEnergies said that it expected a big rise in renewable-based electricity, solar and wind forms of energy, partly due to a general increase in electrification in the industrial and business world. TotalEnergies added it expected that oil in general would plateau before 2030, while natural gas would continue to play a role as a transition fuel.

TotalEnergies is a broad energy company that produces and markets energies on a global scale: oil and biofuels, natural gas and green gases, renewables, and electricity. The company rebranded itself from Total to TotalEnergies during Q2 2021. The French firm has announced allocating part of surplus revenues to share buybacks. Its 105,000 employees are committed to energy that is ever more affordable, clean, reliable and accessible to as many people as possible. Active in more than 130 countries, TotalEnergies puts sustainable development in all its dimensions at the heart of its projects and operations to contribute to the well-being of people.
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MOSCOW (MRC) -- Reaching a significant milestone in its efforts to strengthen the circular economy for plastics, Chevron Phillips Chemical (CPChem) has announced the first commercial sales of its Marlex Anew Circular Polyethylene (PE), according to BusinessWire.

Using advanced recycling technology to process pyrolysis oil, a feedstock made from difficult-to-recycle waste plastics, CPChem is delivering on its commitment to bring a fully certified circular polyethylene product to market in the US.

“We are thrilled to add Marlex Anew Circular PE to our portfolio and make this product available to customers,” said Benny Mermans, CPChem’s vice president of sustainability. “Enhancing the sustainability of our products is one of CPChem’s key focus areas. Filling the first orders of our circular polyethylene is tangible proof of our work to accelerate change for a sustainable future.”

CPChem has already begun delivering Marlex Anew Circular PE and is working to further expand production volumes. Since announcing the launch of its advanced recycling program in October 2020, CPChem has been certified by International Sustainability & Carbon Certification (ISCC) PLUS, a globally recognized sustainability certification system. The company has also scaled production volumes and signed long-term feedstock supply agreements with several producers of high-quality feedstocks.

In addition to establishing a network of suppliers, CPChem worked with Chevron to successfully process pyrolysis oil at Chevron’s Pascagoula Refinery in a certified commercial-scale trial. As a result, this enables CPChem to source feedstock derived from plastics waste to produce Marlex Anew Circular Polyethylene. Additionally, CPChem is evaluating future collaborative opportunities with Chevron to reinforce both companies’ sustainability-related efforts and to support CPChem’s annual production target of 1 billion pounds of Marlex Anew Circular PE by 2030.

As MRC reported earlier, in December 2021, Six Pines Investments LLC, a wholly-owned, sustainable investment subsidiary of CPChem, announced its equity investment in two leading circular plastics recyclers, Nexus Circular LLC (Nexus) and Mura Technology Ltd. (Mura).

We remintd that Chevron Phillips Chemical will make a final investment decision on a new cracker in far southeast Texas in 2022, followed by an FID in 2023 on an USD8 billion joint venture petrochemical complex along the US Gulf Coast in 2023, said Phillips 66 CEO Greg Garland in early August.

Ethylene and propylene are the main feedstocks for the production of polyethylene (PE) and polypropylene (PP), respectively.

According to MRC's ScanPlast report, Russia's estimated PE consumption totalled 2,265,290 tonnes in the first eleven months of 2021, up by 14% year on year. Shipments of all grades of ethylene polymers increased.

CP Chem is a joint venture of Phillips 66 and Chevron.

Headquartered in San Ramon, California, Chevron Corporation is the the second-largest integrated energy company in the United States and among the largest corporations in the world. Chevron is involved in upstream activities including exploration and production, downstream activities including refining, marketing and transportation, and advanced energy technology. Chevron is also invested in power generation and gasification processes.
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- PepsiCo Beverages North America announced that it is investing USD15m in Closed Loop Partners' Leadership Fund, to strengthen recycling infrastructure and build circular supply chains, said the company.

Closed Loop Partners is a New York-based investment firm focused on building the circular economy. The Leadership Fund a private equity fund that acquires and grows companies, including in the packaging value chain. PepsiCo has collaborated with Closed Loop Partners for several years, beginning in 2014 as a founding member of the original Closed Loop Infrastructure Fund. Additionally, they are an investor in the Closed Loop Partners Beverage Fund, sponsored by the American Beverage Every Bottle Back Initiative.

Through investments in recycling infrastructure, PepsiCo hopes to achieve several sustainable packaging targets. By 2030, all Pepsi-branded products will be offered in 100% recycled polyethylene terephthalate (R-PET) bottles, with Pepsi Zero Sugar beginning to be sold in 100% R-PET bottles by 2022. Demand for post-consumer recycled (PCR) content has significantly increased in recent years, as fast moving consumer goods (FMCG) companies have pledged to use PCR content in their packaging over the next five to 10 years.

Low recycling rates in the US may not be able to keep up with demand. "The recycling landscape in America continues to be challenging, and as companies - including PepsiCo - set ambitious goals to use more recycled content in their packaging, there is more need than ever for partnerships and action to increase access to recycled material,” said Jason Blake, Chief Sustainability Officer and SVP at PepsiCo Beverages North America.

US PET bottle recycling rates dropped to 26.6% in 2020, down from 27.9% in 2019, according to NAPCOR’s 2020 PET Recycling Report. Low collection, coupled with strong demand has pushed R-PET prices to record highs in 2021.

As per MRC, PepsiCo wants to cut the use of virgin plastic by 50% serving and use 50% recycled content in plastic packaging by 2030. Beverage and food supplier PepsiCo has announced a new goal to cut virgin plastic per serving by 50 per cent across its global food and beverage portfolio by 2030 as part of its new “pep+,” or PepsiCo Positive, company initiative.

Also, we remind, RT-Invest (Moscow, part of Rostec) will invest 6 bn rubles. in the construction of a new plant in the Moscow region for the production of recycled polyethylene terephthalate (r-PET) from packaging waste, which will be in demand from Mars, PepsiCo and Danone operating in Russia.
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