AkzoNobel to sell building adhesives business

MOSCOW (MRC) -- AkzoNobel N.V., a paints and coatings company and a maker of specialty chemicals Thursday said it received a binding offer from Swiss-based Sika AG to buy its Building Adhesives business for 260 million euros, said Rttnews.

The deal is expected to be completed in the fourth quarter. The proceeds from the deal will be used to repay short-term debt and improve liquidity.

AkzoNobel CEO Ton Buchner said, "We want to focus our Decorative Paints business at AkzoNobel on the strong strategic paint positions we have in Europe and the growth markets of Asia and South America. The intended sale of Building Adhesives is in line with this strategy."

Post the transaction, all of about 550 employees of Building Adhesives, and two manufacturing facilities in Germany and France and its products will be transferred to Sika AG.

Building Adhesives had generated annual revenues of 185 million euros in 2012.

As MRC wrote before, Akzo Nobel N.V. reported a 4% decrease in revenues in the second quarter compared with the same period last year. The company reported that this was due to divestments and adverse currencies against a backdrop of continued challenging market conditions. Operating income for Q2 was 17 percent lower at EUR322 million. Net income attributable to shareholders for the quarter rose to EUR429 million, buoyed by recognition of a deferred tax asset and profit on the divestment of Decorative Paints North America.

Akzo Nobel N.V., trading as AkzoNobel, is a Dutch multinational, active in the fields of decorative paints, performance coatings and specialty chemicals. Headquartered in Amsterdam, the company has activities in more than 80 countries, and employs approximately 55,000 people.
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Solvay Specialty expands polymer lineup, facilities

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Solvay Specialty Polymers has expanded the range of compounds made at its Chinese plant and also has opened six new global warehouses since the start of the year, said Rubbernews.

Solvay SP - an Alpharetta, Ga.-based unit of global chemicals maker Solvay Group of Brussels - began making compounds in January based on its KetaSpire, AvaSpire and Torlin high-performance resins in Changshu, China. KetaSpire is a polyetheretherketone; AvaSpire is a polyaryletherketone; and Torlon is a polyamide-imide.

The Changshu plant opened last year and had been compounding other Solvay resins. But the time was right to add the "ultrapolymer " lineup of PEEK, PAEK and PAI, Solvay executive Chris Wilson said in a recent interview.

"We had been supplying (China) by export from India, the U.S. or Europe," said Wilson, who serves as senior vice president of the firm’s ultra-performance materials business. "But our sales (in China) had reached critical mass, so now was the right time to expand. Sales for high-performance materials are expanding in that part of the world."

Markets using these high-end materials include transportation, health care, electronics, oil and gas and semiconductors. Solvay’s total investment in the Changshu plant stands at more than USD27 million.

Solvay also has expanded its supply chain for these products by adding two U.S. warehouse locations—one in the Houston area and another in the Minneapolis area - and four in Asia, including sites in China, Singapore, Japan and South Korea.

In a news release, officials said that the warehouse expansions "place these ultrapolymers in close proximity to the markets in key geographies around the world."

They added that in the U.S., consumption of these resins is concentrated because of the strong presence of companies involved in oil and gas exploration and production.

As MRC wrote before, Solvay's second-quarter net profit fell to EUR148 million (USD196 million) from EUR239 million a year earlier. Temporary destocking and customers delaying investment decisions had weighed on several businesses. Rebitda was EUR2.07 billion in 2012. It was EUR487 million in the second quarter, down 14% against an especially strong figure in the comparable period last year.

Solvay S.A. is a Belgian chemical company founded in 1863, with its head office in Neder-Over-Heembeek, Brussels, Belgium. Solvay Chemicals is a world leading producer of essential chemicals including soda ash, caustic soda, hydrogen peroxide and special chemicals such as fluorinated products, ultra-fine fillers, high purity barium and strontium.
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BASF expands automotive coatings production capacity in Brazil

MOSCOW (MRC) -- BASF is going to expand its production capacity for waterborne coatings in the Demarchi Coatings Site, located in Sao Paulo state, Brazil. The EUR2 million investment will increase its capacity of both waterborne primer and basecoats. The expansion is expected to be finished in early 2014, said Coatingworld.

The primer smooths out uneven surface irregularities, offers stone-chip protection and protects the e-coat from UV radiation. The basecoat lends the body its color, its effects and its aesthetic appearance.

"Increasing waterborne coatings production capacity, we aim to meet our customers’ demand, that has been driven by new automotive manufacturing plants in Brazil and also by the tendency for waterborne technology instead of solvent borne", said Antonio Carlos Lacerda, Senior Vice President of the Functional Solutions Segment and Infrastructure for BASF South America.

BASF is the pioneer in developing waterborne coatings for the automotive industry. This technology is eco-efficient because water replaces most of the organic solvents that are used in solvent borne coatings thus reducing emissions of VOC – volatile organic compounds.

Furthermore, BASF has been supporting its customers in the use of integrated processes, which can reduce one or two steps of the painting process, maintaining the same high quality standards. The technology contributes to optimize time and resources of coatings and is more eco-efficiently compared to conventional processes. For instance, energy consumption and CO2 emissions are reduced by up to 20%.

As MRC wrote before, BASF is building a new Ultramid polymerization plant with a capacity of 100,000 metric tons per year in Shanghai, China. The new plant is planned to start up in 2015.

BASF operates Ultramid polymerization plants in Ludwigshafen, Germany; Antwerp, Belgium; Freeport, Texas and S a o Paulo, Brazil. The production of polyamide for film, textile and carpet fiber as well as for engineering plastics applications is integrated into BASF’s global Verbund structure with polyamide intermediates (i.e. adipic acid, anolon, caprolactam), chemical raw materials (i.e. ammonia, cyclohexane, sulfuric acid), energy, by-product recovery, logistics and other services.

MRC

PP plant likely to be shut by Daqing Refining & Chemical

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Daqing Refining & Chemical is likely to shut a polypropylene (PP) plant for maintenance turnaround, said Apic-online.

A source in China informed that the plant is slated to be shut on August 9, 2013. It is likely to remain off-stream for around 45 days.

Located in Heilongjiang province, China, the plant has a production capacity of 300,000 mt/year.

Daqing Petrochemical, which is a main buyer of feedstock LPG from Daqing Refining & Chemical, will shut its 600,000 tonne/year naphtha cracker for turnaround at the same time. Daqing Refining & Chemical has an 8m tonne/year refinery in northeast China’s Heilongjiang, with its secondary conversion capacity reaching 6m tonnes/year.

MRC

PetroChina сhoose JM Davy and Dow Oxo SM technology

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Johnson Matthey Davy Technologies and The Dow Chemical announced that PetroChina Guangdong Petrochemical Company, a subsidiary of PetroChina, China's largest oil and gas producer and distributor, has selected LP Oxo technology to produce 2-ethylhexanol, normal butanol and iso butyraldehyde in its major petrochemical complex in Jieyang, Guangdong, China, said Dow in its press-release.

The new LP Oxo unit, with a capacity of 85,000 metric tons of 2-ethylhexanol, 235,000 metric tons of normal butanol and 33,000 metric tons of iso-butyraldehyde on a yearly basis, will adopt JM Davy and Dow's LP Oxo SELECTOR 10 Technology with advanced liquid phase hydrogenation which features a high conversion of propylene to alcohols, low capital investment and easy operation.

PetroChina enjoys a long history of cooperation with JM Davy & Dow and their predecessors in the field of oxo alcohols licensing, whose first technology licensing project can be traced back to Petrochina Daqing project which started up in Heilongjiang province in 1986.

"We are honoured PetroChina Guangdong Petrochemical Company has selected LP Oxo? Technology for one of the largest grass root oxo alcohol plant in the world" said Antoine Bordet, Managing Director of JM Davy. "This sixth LP Oxo licence with a PetroChina group company endorses JM Davy and Dow's long term commitment in providing best in class oxo alcohols technology to our customers. The combination of advanced technology and leading world scale capacity will bring significant benefits to PetroChina Guangdong Petrochemical Company and we are immensly proud to be associated with this important project."

As MRC wrote before, Dow Chemical has signed a long-term ethylene off-take agreement with a new Japanese joint venture that will allow the chemical producer to enhance its performance plastics franchisel. The joint venture is being formed between Japanese companies Idemitsu Kosan and Mitsui & Co. to construct and operate a Linear Alpha Olefins unit on the U.S. Gulf Coast.

The Dow Chemical Company is an American multinational chemical corporation headquartered in Midland, Michigan, United States. Dow is a large producer of plastics, including polystyrene (PS), polyurethane, polyethylene (PE), polypropylene (PP), and synthetic rubber. In 2012, Dow had annual sales of approximately USD57 billion. The Company's more than 5,000 products are manufactured at 188 sites in 36 countries across the globe.

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