Plastic Technologies partners with Brazilian CETEA to provide PET packaging training

(Packaging Essentials) -- Plastic Technologies, Inc. (PTI), a global leader in polyethylene terephthalate (PET) design, development and engineering services, is partnering with the Centro de Tecnologia de Embalagem (CETEA) to produce a second technical training conference for the rapidly-growing Brazilian marketplace.


PTI has been a global pioneer and leader in PET package development and production since its inception in 1982. Because of its three decades of solid PET experience, ⌠CETEA believes that PTI is ideally-suited to share its bottle-making expertise with Brazilian companies, said Assis Garcia, director, CETEA.


CETEA, a non-profit packaging research center was established in 1982. CETEA encourages creative ideas and free technical and scientific thinking among all researchers, employees and collaborators in the search for new paths to the progress of society.


MRC

Clariant's pigments business increases prices

(Clariant) - Clariant's Business Unit Pigments, a world leader in organic pigments and dyes, announces price increases across its product portfolio. The adjustments, which take immediate effect, are necessary to recover significant on-going cost inflation in raw materials, labor, energy and transportation.

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Price increases of up to 8% will affect pigments, pigment preparations and dyes depending on the product range and as contracts allow. Selected individual products will experience higher increases due to the severe impact of their specific raw material cost increase.


MRC

Reliance Industries Limited and BP announced a historic partnership

(BP) -- Reliance Industries Limited and BP today announced a historic partnership between the two companies. Mukesh Ambani, Chairman and Managing Director of Reliance Industries Limited, and Robert Dudley, BP Group Chief Executive, signed the relationship framework and transactional greements in London.


The partnership across the full value chain comprises BP taking a 30 per cent stake in 23 oil and gas production sharing contracts that Reliance operates in India, including the producing KG D6 block, and the formation of a 50:50 joint venture between the two companies for the sourcing and marketing of gas in India. The joint venture will also endeavour to accelerate the creation of infrastructure for receiving, transporting and marketing of natural gas in India.


The partnership will combine BP's world-class deepwater exploration and development capabilities with Reliance's project management and operations expertise.


MRC

Polystyrene imports to Russia in January reduced twice

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Import supplies of polystyrene and styrene plastics to the Russian market in January reduced twice and made 7.8 KT, according to MRC DataScope.


The biggest recession fell at EPS. Low buying activity in winter period as well as increased cost of materials in the external markets resulted in lowered volumes of supplies by 2 KT compared to the previous month.


The imports of GPPS reduced by 52% compared to December. Import supplies of this material from Europe under the pressure of seasonal factor decreased by 1.2 KT.


At that the biggest recession of imports fell at GPPS, meant for injection-molding and extrusion.


In February considerable growth of polystyrene imports is not expected. By late February the growth of EPS supplies is expected in connection with the preparation of the Russian companies for a new season in 2011.

MRC

BP proceeds with increase in PTA production capacity at the BP Zhuhai

(Your Petrochemical News) -- BP today confirmed that it is proceeding with its project for a major increase in purified terephthalic acid (PTA) production capacity at the BP Zhuhai Chemical Company Limited (BP Zhuhai) site in Guangdong Province, China, a JV between BP and Zhuhai Port Co., Ltd. and also announced that it is planning to build a new world-scale PTA plant at the same site.


The planned debottleneck at Zhuhai will increase capacity by more than 200,000 tonnes a year from its second unit (Z2), making the total PTA production capacity of the Zhuhai site some 1.7 million tonnes a year.


BP has completed engineering design work for the Z2 debottleneck and expects the expansion to be fully operational in 1Q2012.


A new third PTA plant in Zhuhai is under pre-engineering planning. With a capacity of 1,250,000 tonnes per year, it will be the first to employ BP's latest generation PTA technology and, subject to approval from its shareholders and relevant Chinese government agencies, is expected to come on stream earliest 2014 to meet PTA demand growth in China. This will make Zhuhai the largest PTA site in BP's global PTA system.


MRC