Brenntag Specialties opens new innovation & application centre in UK

Brenntag announced the opening of operations of its new Innovation & Application Center in Leeds, UK, located in the Alexandra House of Lawnswood Business Park in North Leeds, said the company.

The business park already hosts the headquarters of Brenntag in the UK as well. The facility will focus on research and development for Personal Care applications.

Dedicated Brenntag experts will provide customers and suppliers with concepts and prototype development, customized formulation support, technical solutions, and stability studies for a broad range of applications.

We remind, Brenntag, the global market leader in chemicals and ingredients distribution, today announced the expansion of the partnership with Cooperatie Koninklijke Avebe U.A. (“Royal Avebe”). The expanded distribution agreement now offers Royal Avebe potato starch and protein products to Brenntag customers in Belgium, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands in addition to the initial region of Turkey.

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Evonik Coating Additives is expanding its TEGO® Rad range of tailor-made silicone acrylates with a unique, radically crosslinkable additive for radiation-curing coatings and inks, said the company.

Ideal for excellent wetting and slip with low foaming, the new TEGO® Rad 2330 is designed for use in a wide range of inks and varnish applications as well as clear and pigmented wood coatings.

TEGO® Rad 2330 carries several reactive groups per molecule, ensuring good crosslinking and minimized migration. It consistently shows strong surface tension reduction and anti-crater effect, slip and release, and excellent low foaming.

“There’s high customer demand in the printing inks industry for additives that have high wetting, anti-crater, flow, slip, and release efficacy and lowest possible migration,” says Susanne Struck, Head of Market Segment Inks, EMEA & Global Projects. “Our TEGO® Rad 2330 is a great product offer that addresses the ongoing needs of this important segment.”

Evonik's TEGO® Rad portfolio of silicone acrylates offers formulators a complete toolbox of solutions to ensure top performance in paints and coatings. These additives for radiation-curing inks and coatings can improve flow, levelling, and appearance, prevent cratering and allow formulators to create products with the desired level of slip and flow. Choosing TEGO® Rad products with a higher or lower number will result in a different level of slip and compatibility, allowing more precision in their formulations.

Evonik’s Coating Additives business line has a comprehensive portfolio for radiation-curing inks as well as a wide range of products to enhance high-performing formulations in the automotive, architectural, decorative, marine and other industries.

We remind, Evonik is extending its portfolio of elastomeric materials for powder bed fusion 3D printing technologies. The specialty chemicals company is launching with INFINAM® TPA 4006 P a new powder grade that is especially optimized for all types of open source SLS 3D printing machines.

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China’s Sinopec said it has signed an equity agreement with Kazakh state-owned oil and gas firm KazMunayGaz for a 30% stake in a planned polyethylene project in Kazakhstan, as per Reuters.

The project has a design capacity of 1.25 million metric tons per year and is located in western Kazakhstan’s Atryau region, the statement said.

We remind, Sinopec Corp has applied to the government to swap some of its marine fuel export quotas for allowances to export light products such as diesel, jet fuel or gasoline, four China-based industry sources said this week. Asia's largest refiner has asked to swap a quota to export 800,000 metric tons of low-sulfur fuel oil, part of the 3 million tons of marine fuel quota recently issued by Beijing, for a similar amount of allowances for light product exports, the sources said. Approval could come by the end of October, one of the sources said.

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Pemex shut down the 270,000 barrel-per-day crude distillation unit (CDU) at its Deer Park, Texas, refinery on Monday because a process line ruptured, said people familiar with plant operations, said Reuters.

The DU-2 CDU, the larger of two at the 312,500 bpd refinery, provides 80% of feedstocks from crude oil to production units at the refinery. If it remains shut, other units will have to shut down, the sources said.

A spokesperson for the Mexican state-oil company did not reply to a request for comment. Over the weekend, Pemex successfully restarted the 70,000-bpd gasoline-producing fluidic catalytic cracker (FCC), the sources said.

The FCC was shut by an Oct. 4 malfunction, according to the sources. CDUs break down crude oil into hydrocarbon feedstocks for all other units at the refinery.

We remind, Pemex’s production of aromatics, ethane, propylene, and sulphur fell in the first quarter, year on year, but methane output rose strongly. The rise in production of methane and its derivatives helped overall petrochemicals production to remain mostly flat, with 319,000 tonnes produced during the first quarter, down by 0.62% year on year.

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Russia's seaborne diesel and gasoil exports fell by 20% to about 1.1 million metric tons in the first 15 days of October from the same period in September due to ongoing seasonal maintenance of refineries and a fuel export ban, data from traders and LSEG showed, said Hydrocarbonprocessing.

Idle primary oil refining capacity for October is estimated at 4.0 million tons, down 22% from September, according to Reuters calculations. Russia temporarily banned exports of gasoline and ultra-low sulfur diesel (ULSD) from Sept. 21 to cope with a domestic market shortage, although gasoil and marine diesel export shipments were allowed.

The embargo was partially lifted from Oct. 9, with Russia resuming ULSD seaborne exports. Due to the export ban, diesel loadings via the Russian Baltic port of Primorsk, the country's biggest outlet for exports of ULSD, have fallen in the first 15 days of October by 22% from the same period in September to 330,000 metric tons.

So far in October, Turkey remains the top destination for diesel exports from Russian ports, taking about 25% of total supplies, or nearly 280,000 metric tons, LSEG shipping data showed. Diesel loadings from Russia to Brazil have totaled about 211,000 metric tons since the start of this month - down by 20% from Sept. 1-15.

According to LSEG data, the leading importers of Russian diesel in Africa so far this month have been Togo (72,000 metric tons), Tunisia (66,000 metric tons) and Libya (65,000 metric tons). About 120,000 tons of Russian diesel are destined since the start of this month for ship-to-ship (STS) loadings near Malta and the Greek port of Kalamata.

Another 90,000 tons of diesel loaded in Russian ports in October does not yet have a confirmed destination. All the shipping data above is based on the date of cargo departure.

We remind, Pemex’s production of aromatics, ethane, propylene, and sulphur fell in the first quarter, year on year, but methane output rose strongly. The rise in production of methane and its derivatives helped overall petrochemicals production to remain mostly flat, with 319,000 tonnes produced during the first quarter, down by 0.62% year on year.

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