Bilfinger wins EUR60 million contract from SABIC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Bilfinger has been chosen as maintenance partner for a EUR60 million contract by SABIC UK Petrochemicals Limited to carry out a range of services across facilities on its Teesside site, said Hydrocarbonprocessing.

The services will include mechanical, electrical and instrumentation engineering, as well as access, insulation, painting, and asbestos management and removal. The four-year contract has a volume of circa ?50 million (EUR57.8 million) and comes under Bilfinger’s Engineering & Maintenance service line.

“Bilfinger has a strong track record of industrial services on such large scale assets. With our Bilfinger Maintenance Concept, we help our customers boost asset efficiency and availability while cutting maintenance costs. SABIC has chosen a reliable partner in Bilfinger with a long history of proven experience to ensure smooth production and short downtimes at one of its largest sites,” Tom Blades, CEO of Bilfinger said.

Bilfinger employs 2,500 employees in the UK, with approximately 200 employees dedicated to the engineering and maintenance services for SABIC.

Bilfinger’s services for process industry customers include design and build, automated control and electrical systems, installation and commissioning as well as operations and maintenance.

MRC informed earlier, SABIC has announced that the company is making significant investments in expanding the capacity of its ULTEM and EXTEM high heat resin production in order to meet growing demand.
The new production plant in Singapore is due to come on-stream in the first half of 2021, making SABIC the only high heat resin producer with manufacturing capability in all regions.

SABIC is a global chemical company, employing over 540 people across two sites in Teesside. Its Wilton site is located on Wilton International, one of the UK’s leading process manufacturing sites.

MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Stratasys has established an authorised materials partner programme designed to expand the range of high-performance polymers available to manufacturers leveraging Stratasys’ fused deposition modelling process using FDM Technology in 3D printing applications, said Britishplastics.

As an initial step, advanced materials leader Solvay has been selected to help launch the programme and deliver new polymers for the Stratasys F900 3D Printer.

For more than two decades, Stratasys has helped customers engineer durable, highly repeatable 3D printed parts for high-performance environments leveraging its advanced materials, including FDM Nylon 12CF, FDM TPU 92A, and Antero 800 PEKK-based material.

Under the authorised materials partner programme, Solvay will access exclusive tools and Stratasys expertise to develop materials aligned with the company’s quality and performance benchmarks.

The partners will share an authorised partner materials roadmap to guide Solvay’s selection and development of materials for Stratasys FDM printers.

Stratasys is unveiling its collaboration agreement with Solvay at RAPID+TCT 2019 at the Cobo Center in Detroit, Michigan.
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- China’s privately owned Hengli Petrochemical has increased its Saudi Arabian crude imports for April and May as it prepares to bring a new refinery in northeastern China to full capacity, reported Reuters with reference to officials and ship tracking data.

The purchases have kept Saudi crude exports to China elevated so far in the second quarter despite lower global demand during peak refinery maintenance season. Saudi oil exports to China averaged at 1.37 million barrels per day (bpd) in the first four months this year, up from 1.01 million bpd in the same period of 2018, Refinitiv trade flow data showed.

Hengli is expected to lift 6 million to 8 million barrels of Saudi crude in May (194,000 bpd to 258,000 bpd), after loading about 8 million barrels in April, the highest monthly intake since it started trial runs at its 400,000-bpd refinery in December, one of the sources said.

"The plant is now running at 85 to 90 percent capacity. It can reach full capacity very, very soon," said a company executive with direct knowledge of the plant’s operation.

A second company source said the plant is targeting May 20 for full operations.

A company spokesman confirmed that Hengli aims to bring the plant - located in the port city of Dalian - to full operation sometime later this month, without giving further details.

From June onwards, Hengli’s Saudi oil intake will average around 4 million to 6 million barrels per month, while the remaining supplies will be made up of Iraq’s Basra Light crude and Brazil’s Marlim grade, said the company executive.

"We like Saudi oil in general, as it yields fairly good margins for the plant," the executive said.

Hengli has signed on to buy 130,000 bpd of crude from Saudi Aramco, a deal that started in the second-half of 2018.

Hengli loaded about 2 million barrels per month of Saudi oil in the first quarter, according to one of the sources and Refinitiv data, helping to keep the company’s total liftings so far this year within contractual volume.

Hengli said in March its plant successfully produced oil products and paraxylene, a petrochemical used to make textiles and bottles.

Saudi Arabia was China’s top oil supplier for a second straight month in March, overtaking Russia, and thanks to supply agreements with Hengli and another new privately controlled refiner Rongsheng Petrochemical.

Hengli, new to the refined fuel market, has deployed more than 200 employees for domestic marketing, with plans to lease storage space in Tianjin in north China, Yangzhou and Jiangyin in the eastern province of Jiangsu, and Dongguan in the southern province of Guangdong, said the second company official.

As MRC wrote before, in April 2017, LyondellBasell announced Hengli Petrochemical (Dalian) Chemical Co., Ltd. had selected LyondellBasell Hostalen ACP polyethylene (PE) process technology. The technology will be used for a 400 KTA high density polyethylene (HDPE) unit to be built in the Hengli Petrochemical Industrial Park (HPIP) on Changxing Island in Dalian, Liaoning Province, China.
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Pucheng Clean Energy Chemical Company has undertaken a planned shutdown at its Coal-to-olefins (CTO) plant, as per Apic-online.

A Polymerupdate source in China informed that the company has commenced turnaround at the plant on May 13, 2019. The plant is likely to resume production in the first week of June 2019.

Located at Weinan, Shaanxi, China, the CTO plant has an ethylene production capacity of 300,000 mt/year and propylene capacity of 400,000 mt/year.

As MRC reported earlier, on May 28, 2018, Pucheng Clean Energy restarted its PP plant following an unplanned shutdown. The plant remaind off-line for around one week owing to technical issues. Located at Shaanxi province in China, the plant has a PP production capacity of 400,000 mt/year.

Besides, Pucheng Clean Energy shut this PP plant for an unplanned maintenance from 21 October to 12 November, 2018.
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- BASF plans to build an engineering plastics compounding plant and a thermoplastic polyurethane (TPU) plant at the company’s proposed integrated chemical production (“Verbund”) site in Zhanjiang, China. These will be the first production plants to come onstream at the site, said the company.

By 2022, the new engineering plastics compounding plant will supply an additional capacity of 60,000 metric tons per year of BASF engineering plastics compounds in China. This will bring the total BASF capacity of these products in Asia Pacific to 290,000 metric tons per year. As part of the company’s plan to implement a comprehensive smart manufacturing concept at the Verbund site based on cutting-edge technologies, the new plants will utilize automated packaging, high-tech control systems, and automated guided vehicles.

"Less than a year after we signed the first MoU, we are delighted to announce the first plants to be established at our smart Verbund site in Zhanjiang,” said Dr. Stephan Kothrade, President Functions Asia Pacific, President and Chairman Greater China, BASF. “The project is moving forward swiftly and customers in southern China will soon benefit from these innovative products to meet their immediate needs."

General facilities for the Zhanjiang Verbund site will also be built along with the two new plants. BASF Integrated Site (Guangdong) Co. Ltd (BIG), BASF’s new wholly-owned subsidiary, has been officially founded. This entity will oversee the operations of the new Verbund site, underlining BASF’s commitment to the southern China market.

"We want to improve our support for customers in the southern China market and around the world. We will do this by establishing the new plants close to growing customer industries, and through improvements in efficiency realized from our smart manufacturing approach. This will increase our speed of innovation and the efficiency of our services,” said Raimar Jahn, President of BASF’s Performance Materials division. “In particular, electric and electronics companies and automotive manufacturers are turning to BASF to help them address trends such as the electrification of cars and miniaturization of electronic devices."

The growth of the TPU market, in particular for high-end applications, is driven by several factors including increasing regulatory requirements and growing customer expectations for enhanced sustainability performance in such areas as e-mobility, lightweight and automation. BASF solutions support this growth with safety-enhanced cables and wires for automation and automotive, as well as lightweight materials for consumer goods. With customer needs evolving rapidly across the world, BASF is ramping up its investment in emerging markets to address local requirements while continuing to invest in developed economies.

BASF signed the first Memorandum of Understanding for the Verbund site with the Guangdong Provincial Government in Berlin in July 2018, and in January 2019 the company signed a Framework Agreement setting out further details of the plan. The Verbund site in Guangdong would be BASF’s largest investment, estimated up to USD10 billion upon completion, and would be operated under the sole responsibility of BASF. The integrated value chain will connect upstream and downstream plants from basic chemicals to more consumer-oriented products and solutions, serving growth sectors like consumer goods or transportation. The site would ultimately be the third-largest BASF site worldwide, following Ludwigshafen, Germany, and Antwerp, Belgium.

In 2017, BASF’s Coatings division inaugurated a new automotive coatings plant at its Bangpoo manufacturing site, Samutprakarn province, Thailand.

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.
MRC