Indorama Ventures will expand its production in Russia

(plastemart) -- Indorama Ventures, the world's second largest PET producer, saw a 20% growth in net profits this year following its acquisitions in Europe. The company is keen to acquire more polyester plants in Russia, India, China and Brazil with the expectation of a adding to profits. The company expects to start the new projects in Q3 with funding to finance the projects from the company's internal working capital and bank loans. The three projects, worth Bt2 bln, were acquisition of PTA and PET plants in Italy from Dow Chemical, expansion of the Rotterdam PET plant by 190,000 tpa to total capacity of 390,000 tpa, and energy integration at Rotterdam through the acquisition of a co-located power and utility plant from Air Products.

MRC

(prw) -- Norwich-based bottles and closures manufacturer FL Plastics has invest more than 250,000 pounds to increase output capacity of toiletries, cosmetics, personal care and pharmaceuticals products.

Asset finance specialist Lombard helped the company purchase a new Nissei injection stretch blow moulding machine, which has a capacity of 35,000 bottles per day.

According to FL Plastics managing director, Geoff Fitzgerald-Lombard, the company has maintained its order book despite tough market conditions and that by making the investment ⌠we will be able to exploit new opportunities more readily.

MRC

(Dow) -- Stockholders at The Dow Chemical Company's 113th Annual Meeting today elected Arnold A. Allemang, Jacqueline K. Barton, James A. Bell, Jeff M. Fettig, Barbara H. Franklin, John B. Hess, Andrew N. Liveris, Paul Polman, Dennis H. Reilley, James M. Ringler, Ruth G. Shaw and Paul G. Stern to the Company's Board of Directors for one-year terms.

Stockholders also ratified the appointment of Deloitte & Touche LLP as the Company's independent auditor for 2010.

In other business, preliminary voting results indicate that stockholders have approved a Company-sponsored proposal lowering the threshold required for stockholder-initiated meetings from 50 percent to 25 percent.

Preliminary voting results also indicate that stockholders have defeated three stockholder-sponsored proposals: one regarding environmental remediation, a second on executive stock retention and a third on executive compensation.

MRCMRC reference

Share in the Russian market, 2008:

polyethylene - 2.5% (including LLDPE - 33.1%);

polypropylene - 0.8% (including PP-impact - 1.1%);

polystyrene - 2.6%.

Annual sales growth in Russia, recent 5 years:

polyethylene - 55%;

polypropylene - 28%;

polystyrene - 2%.

Imports by processing technologies:

pipe extrusion;

film extrusion;

sheet extrusion;

foaming.

(DuPont) -- DuPont recently announced its intent to acquire a minority share in Changshu 3F Zhonghao New Chemical Materials Co., Ltd. (Zhonghao), pending completion of definitive agreements and securing appropriate Chinese government approvals. Shanghai 3F New Materials Co., Ltd., is the majority owner of Zhonghao.

⌠Our relationship with Zhonghao has matured into a successful strategic partnership over the last eight years, said Gary Spitzer, president - DuPont Chemicals & Fluoroproducts. ⌠Zhonghao's world-class fluorochemical manufacturing capabilities will strengthen our ability to better serve our customers worldwide. It also will enable a faster response to rapidly growing regional markets for our broad portfolio of fluorochemicals across all applications. This applies for existing and future chemistries for refrigerants or for our specialty fluorochemicals markets.

MRC

(plastemart) -- Singapore plans to proceed with construction of floating oil / petrochemicals storage at Pulau Sebarok to help boost supply of the much needed oil/ petrochemicals storage in Singapore's oil refining/trading hub. Pulau Sebarok is not far from Jurong Island, Singapore's main oil/petrochemicals hub. The island country faces problem of shortage of land amid increased demand for oil storage by traders.

Hence JCT has decided to seek a multi-disciplinary team of consultants 'to develop the preliminary structural conceptual design and construct the VLFS storage facility at the proposed site at Pulau Sebarok'. The consultant is to prepare the engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) tender for the very large floating structures (VLFS), with the tender possibly going out by end 2010 or early 2011. JTC has also embarked on building first phase of Jurong Rock Cavern to store oil underground at an investment outlay of US$890 mln.

Initiated in 2007, Phase I, which developed a preliminary structural conceptual design of an attached-to-land VLFS storage. This was followed by Phase II, that enveloped areas like environmental impact, marine soil investigation and engineering surveys and sea current monitoring and metocean design data analysis. Feasibility studies on the VLFS were completed in March 2010. JTC studies earlier ascertained that to be economical, the minimum storage capacity of a VLFS should be 300,000 cubic metres, or equivalent to that of a very large crude carrier.

MRC