EQUATE announces Mar MEG India contract price

EQUATE has nominated its March 2024 MEG India Contract Price (ICP) at $563/tonne CFR (cost & freight) India Main Ports, said the company.

The March nomination was USD11/tonne higher than February number.

We remind, EQUATE has nominated its February 2024 MEG India Contract Price (ICP) at USD552/tonne CFR (cost & freight) India Main Ports, said the company. The February nomination was USD32/tonne higher than January number.
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Trading house Vitol has bought the first naphtha cargo produced for export by Nigeria's new 650,000-bpd Dangote oil refinery, said Hydrocarbonprocessing.

Dangote issued a tender to sell the 60,000 metric ton cargo earlier this month for Feb. 23-29 loading.

Vitol declined to comment.

We remind, Trafigura and Vitol still help to export limited supplies of Russian refined products within the rules of international sanctions, but they are considering whether to resume more trade in Russia's oil, as per Reuters.
The two Swiss companies were among the largest lifters of Russian crude oil and refined products before the country's invasion of Ukraine last February. By last summer, both firms had already sharply reduced their presence in Russian oil and later sold their interests in Vostok, a major upstream development in Siberia.

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South Korea's SK Chemicals Co. is targeting the US medical packaging market with its circular recycling materials, said Kedglobal.

Circular recycling is SK Chemicals' unique chemical recycling technology that involves turning discarded plastic into raw materials through depolymerization and then manufacturing recycled plastic using these materials.

SK Chemicals announced on Thursday that it will participate in the Medical Design & Manufacturing West (MD&M) 2024, a medical equipment and manufacturing exhibition held in Anaheim, California, from Feb. 6 to 8. MD&M is one of the major exhibitions in the US medical device and manufacturing industry.

At this exhibition, SK Chemicals will showcase not only copolyester, which has been applied to packaging used in medical settings such as mask shields and medical equipment storage containers but also materials with circular recycling technology, such as SKYPET CR and ECOTRIA CR.

In particular, the company aims to respond to the increasing demand for recycled plastics in the medical device industry by strengthening collaboration with Pacur LLC, a US medical packaging company. In the future, SK Chemicals and Pacur plan to develop products based on recycled materials such as SKYPET and ECOTRIA series.

"Pacur is a leading company in the US medical packaging sector, and this collaboration will be a cornerstone for enhancing sustainability in the medical packaging market," said Kim Eung Soo, Head of Green Materials Business at SK Chemicals. "We will make more efforts to expand the supply of recycled materials in the market," he added.

We remind, South Korea's SK Chemicals Co. unveils recycled plastic LP records. The company announced on Thursday it has jointly developed the EcoRecord, an LP record made from 100% recycled plastic with Germany-based global music production company Sonopress.

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Ineos Inovyn, the chlorvinyls arm of UK-based chemical company Ineos, has announced that its PVC production operations in Jemeppe, Belgium, will be partly powered by solar energy starting this summer, said the company.

The Jemeppe site is one of the largest PVC production facilities in Europe, with 420,000 tonnes supplied to sectors such as building, automotive, and piping every year.

PerPetum Energy is building the solar park, which is owned and financed by Green4Power. Ineos has signed a 15-year power purchase agreement (PPA) to purchase all the renewable electricity produced at the site. The 60 MW solar installation is expected to come online in July 2024. Over 90,000 solar panels will occupy the equivalent of 56 football pitches and reduce carbon emissions by 14,000 tonnes annually, helping Ineos' to diversify its energy sources.

An interesting feature of the solar park is its east-west orientation, deviating from the more usual south-orientation choice in the northern hemisphere. East-west installations produce less energy per installed module. However, an east-west structure can squeeze in more rows and panels, increasing the generation capacity per surface area and reducing the amount of land used. Moreover, east-west solar parks generate more electricity during the morning and evening hours and less during the midday peak sunny hours, when electricity is cheaper.

This orientation can be a good match for clients like Ineos, whose operations are energy intensive over the entire day. Ineos will be able to power its PVC operations with renewable electricity when using grid-based energy would be the most expensive. Reducing the energy bill can in turn deliver a competitive advantage at a time when European plastic producers are paying much higher prices than in the US or China, for example.

“European plastics face a competitiveness gap with the US and China, driven by higher energy costs, less access to raw material and a challenging regulatory landscape,” Ineos said in a statement. “Measures are needed to safeguard the competitiveness of our industry and avoid Europe becoming dependent on imports from abroad. Support schemes that provide access to renewable energy are critical to a sustainable future,” the company concluded.

We remind, INEOS Inovyn announces a new Ultra Low Carbon range (ULC) of Chlor-Alkali products that reduce the carbon footprint of caustic soda, caustic potash and chlorine by up to 70% compared to industry averages, said the company. The new range uses renewable energy sources to power INEOS Inovyn manufacturing sites. The first production sites include Rafnes in Norway, which uses local hydroelectric power and Antwerp in Belgium, where electricity comes directly from North Sea wind turbines.

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South Korea’s top chemicals maker LG Chem Ltd. and food and biotechnology firm CJ CheilJedang Corp. have agreed to launch an eco-friendly bio-nylon joint venture to create a new revenue source and cut carbon emissions, said Kedglobal.

The two companies said on Thursday that LG Chem Chief Executive Shin Hak-cheol and CJ CheilJedang CEO Choi Eun-seok have signed a head of agreement (HOA) to build a JV plant to produce eco-friendly nylon based on bio-materials, called PMDA, which are produced by fermenting corn, sugarcane and other crops.

Once up and running, the JV will be Korea’s first bio-nylon project to produce both raw materials and finished products, according to LG.

Under the agreement, CJ will produce PMDA with its microbial precision fermentation technology while LG will polymerize or combine raw materials to produce bio-nylon, also known as bio-polyamide, and sell products.

We remind, LG Chem Ltd. striving to become a leading global battery materials player broke ground on its first-ever cathode plant in the US, expected to be the biggest of its kind in the world’s third-largest EV market. The plant’s groundbreaking ceremony took place in Clarksville, Tennessee on Tuesday (local time) about a year after the Korean company and the US state government in November last year signed a memorandum of understanding to invest $3.2 billion in total to build a cathode manufacturing facility in the US.

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