ALPLA expands into Morocco partnering with Diana Holding

ALPLA Group announced that it has expanded its presence in North Africa by entering the Moroccan market, said the company.

The company also announced that it has purchased a majority share in Atlantic Packaging and founded the joint venture (JV) ALPLA Morroco with previous owner Diana Holding.

The move will allow the company to offer its expertise and experience to the production on PET preforms for the regional markets in Maghreb and Western Africa. The JV was signed by the contracting parties in Aug 2023 and has been approved by local antitrust authorities. Terms and conditions of the deal were not disclosed.

We remind, ALPLA is focusing on the circular economy: the global packaging specialist invests more than 50 million euros annually in recycling and uses state-of-the-art technologies to produce recycled material. With an installed and projected output capacity of 350,000 tonnes per year, the company is one of the world’s leading plastics recyclers. Analyses performed by the life cycle assessment specialist c7-consult now confirm efficient production at a total of four additional sites in Mexico and Germany. There, ALPLArecycling produces rPET and rHDPE, which produces up to 87 per cent fewer carbon emissions than virgin materials.

mrchub.com

TotalEnergies has invested GBP 20 M to acquire a minority stake in Xlinks First Limited, a company founded in 2019 in the UK, joining fellow investors Octopus Energy and Abu Dhabi National Energy Company (TAQA), said the company.

Xlinks plans to develop a giant renewable project in Morocco (combining solar and wind) to supply green electricity to the UK through the installation of high-voltage direct current (HDVC) subsea cables, coupled with a large battery energy storage. Upon completion, the project is expected to deliver enough renewable, reliable and affordable electricity to power over 7 M British homes.

We remind, TotalEnergies has reported net income of $6.67bn (€6.33bn) in the third quarter of 2023, a marginal 1% increase compared with $6.62bn in the same period a year ago, said the company. In the July–September quarter of 2023, the French oil and gas company reported $54.41bn in revenue from sales, a 16% decline from $64.92bn in Q3 2022.

TotalEnergies is a global multi-energy company that produces and markets energies: oil and biofuels, natural gas and green gases, renewables and electricity. Our more than 100,000 employees are committed to energy that is ever more affordable, more sustainable, more reliable and accessible to as many people as possible. Active in nearly 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.

mrchub.com

MRC-- SK Geo Centric Co., a South Korean energy and chemical company, is accelerating technical negotiations to build the world's first plastic recycling complex, the Ulsan Advanced Recycling Cluster (ARC), said Kedglobal.

SK Geo Centric announced on Friday that 12 of its engineers and researchers recently completed modifications and technical consultations at PureCycle Technology's plastic recycling plant in Ohio, optimizing the recycling process for around two months from January this year.

PureCycle is a company that uses chemical recycling technology to extract high-purity recycled polypropylene from waste plastic, removing contaminants, odors and colors.

In October last year, the two companies signed a joint venture agreement and are working toward starting construction of the recycling plant in Ulsan within the year.

Since January, engineers from both companies have spent over 1,000 hours discussing specific technologies through online and offline meetings, conducting various tests to optimize the process for Korean waste plastics.

We remind, SK Geo Centric, a subsidiary of South Korea's top refiner SK Innovation Co., will join hands with a global company to build a super-large waste plastic recycling plant in Ulsan, a coastal area of South Gyeongsang Province.

mrchub.com

Lotte Fine Chemical Co., South Korea’s largest ammonia producer, will spend a total of 129 billion won ($99 million) in an aim to become the world’s largest food and pharmaceutical materials producer and bump up its green materials sales by six times by 2030 to outdistance Chinese rivals, said the company.

The subsidiary of Lotte Chemical Corp. said on Thursday that its board of directors late last month approved a new plan to inject 79 billion won to jack up the production capacity of cellulose ethers widely used in manufacturing foods and pharmaceutical drugs to 6,000 tons a year.

The company originally planned to invest 39 billion won to expand the capacity to 3,000 tons.

Once the addition of new cellulose derivative production lines is completed by 2025 under the new plan, the Korean fine chemical company will boast the world’s largest production capacity of food and pharmaceutical chemical materials.

The US-based International Flavors & Fragrances Inc. (IFF) is currently the world’s No. 1 in the market, followed by Lotte Fine Chemical and Japan’s Shin-Etsu Chemical Co.

We remind, Lotte Chemical Corp. has sold its entire stakes in joint ventures with Chinese partners as the Korean company faces a supply glut amid weak demand in the world’s second-largest economy.

mrchub.com

Topsoe is pleased to have signed an MoU with Standard Gas, a decarbonization technology company, to collaborate on a UK-based project to produce renewable natural gas and methanol from residual waste feedstocks, said Hydrocarbonprocessing.

Under the terms of the MoU, Topsoe will provide the technologies, engineering, equipment items and catalysts that will enable the synthesis gas produced by Standard Gas to be processed into valuable products such as methane and methanol.

The process of renewable natural gas production will additionally produce biochar, which captures and removes carbon and can be sequestered in valuable products for the agricultural, construction and environmental industries.

Standard Gas will develop and obtain all appropriate approvals, licenses, funding and offtake agreements needed to implement the project. Standard Gas will either own and operate the potential project or license to a third-party owner.

We remind, Air Liquide Engineering & Construction will provide the license, basic engineering and FEED for the new plant with its innovative and well-referenced syngas cleaning, hydrogen purification and carbon capture (RECTISOL) technologies, which will process around one million tons of wastes and residues into SAF each year.

mrchub.com