Solvay, Ineos JV to be named Inovyn, open by end of 2014

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Solvay SA and Ineos Group AG have given a name to their chlorovinyls joint venture, Inovyn, as the two firms prepare the launch the company by the end of 2014, said Plasticsnews.

The new company will officially open following divestments by both companies required by the European Commission. Until completion, Solvay and Ineos will continue to run their businesses separately.

"Thanks to this agreement we now have a unique opportunity to create a world- class competitive player with high-quality assets and substantial synergies, better able to withstand the challenging environment in Europe," said Jean-Pierre Clamadieu, CEO of Solvay. "This is another key step in the transformation of Solvay's business profile."
Inovyn will be based in London and have an estimated 3 billion euros (USD4 billion) in annual sales.

The venture, announced last year, would allow the companies to cut costs in areas from transport to marketing and raise profitability amid a European industry suffering from inflated raw material and energy costs. The PVC market is facing overcapacity and weak demand in Europe, prompting companies in the labor-intensive industry to explore deals. Solvay has said it plans to exit the PVC venture at a later stage.

Solvay S.A. is a Belgian chemical company founded in 1863, with its head office in Neder-Over-Heembeek, Brussels, Belgium. The company has diversified into two major sectors of activity: chemicals and plastics. Solvay supplies over 1500 products across 35 brands of high-performance polymers – fluoropolymers, fluoroelastomers, fluorinated fluids, semi-aromatic polyamides, sulfone polymers, aromatic ultra polymers, high-barrier polymers and cross-linked high-performance compounds.

INEOS Group Limited is a privately owned multinational chemicals company consisting of 15 standalone business units, headquartered in Rolle, Switzerland and with its registered office in Lyndhurst, United Kingdom. It is the fourth largest chemicals company in the world measured by revenues (after BASF, Dow Chemical and LyondellBasell) and the largest privately owned company in the United Kingdom.
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MOSCOW (MRC) -- RKW, a Germany-based films and flexible packaging company, has announced that it is taken over the business operations of Biofol Film, a subsidiary of the WKI Group, following approval by the German Anti-Trust Commission, said Plasticsnews.

"This acquisition brings us one step closer to the objective of further strengthening our current market position and growing the company," CEO Roland Roth said in a statement.

"The takeover of the business operations of Biofol Film is another element in the strategy of expanding the agricultural and construction sectors and thus the whole company throughout the world."

The company says that the Biofol plant in Unseburg, Germany, will be incorporated into RKW Agri, a subsidiary of the RKW Group which is responsible for its agricultural business. The Unseburg plant manufactures a wide range of plastic films for the construction, agriculture, landscape gardening and packaging industries.

In April RKW acquired Belgian plastics manufacturer, Hyplast nv. The company states that with the acquisition of Biofol, it is implementing the next step in its strategy.

As MRC wrote before, Film and flexible packaging group RKW SE is planning to open its first business unit in China at the end of 2014, signalling its entry into the Chinese market. Construction has started at the premises of RKW’s affiliate Renolit in Guangzhou. Renolit has maintained a presence in Guangzhou since 2006. RKW China will supply personal care films for the Chinese market.

The RKW-Group is a globally-active company that manufactures films and nonwovens. Since its founding in 1957, the family-owned and operated company, which is not listed on the stock exchange, has made a name for itself with its high quality and innovative products. Around 3,000 employees in 20 locations set high standards in quality, innovation, and customer service and ensure that the Group will continue to occupy a leading position in the European plastics industry for many years to come.
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MOSCOW (MRC) -- Trans Pacific Petrochemical Indotama (TPPI) is in plans to restart an aromatics plant. It was shut in May 2014 owing to poor paraxylene (PX) margins, reported Apic-online.

A Polymerupdate source in Indonesia informed that the plant is planned to be restarted in August 2014.

Located in East Java, Indonesia, the plant has a PX production capacity of 550,000 mt/year and benzene capacity of 350,000 mt/year.

We remind that, as MRC wrote previously, in May 2014, South Korea's Samsung Total Petrochemicals Co Ltd announced that a small quantity of a petrochemical product leaked into the sea from a newly-built PX plant in South Korea. The company has cleaned it up. About 2.4 kilolitres of para diethyl benzene leaked while flowing to test pipelines of the new plant at the company's Daesan petrochemical complex. The new plant has an annual production capacity of 1 million tons of paraxylene and 420,000 tons of benzene.
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MOSCOW (MRC) -- Construction products based on Micronal PCM by BASF constitute an alternative to or a complementary solution for power-consuming air conditioning systems, as per the company's press release.

The current introduction of the gypsum "Comfortboard 23" by Knauf, a manufacturer of construction systems, means that an innovative, ready-to-use construction product was launched in the German market, which is going to be available worldwide.

When temperatures rise, the Micronal PCM material within the board gets activated. Through absorbing and storing superfluous heat as and when required, the micro-encapsulated Micronal phase change material ensures that the ambient room temperature remains comfortable for longer. This is achieved through the paraffin wax core of the microscopically small Micronal PCM polymer capsules, which starts to melt around temperatures of 23 Celsius; this leads to an absorption of heat and prevents the room temperature from rising. As soon as, for example during the night, the room is ventilated and the room temperature goes down, the absorbed heat gets re-released. The core of the Micronal PCM latent heat storage material cools down, solidifies and is once more ready to absorb the next temperature peak on the following day of summer weather.

Therefore, Micronal PCM facilitates intelligent temperature management - without the use of energy- and maintenance-intensive climate control systems. Another option is to combine an air-conditioning system with a latent heat storage facility. The air conditioning system needed in such a case would be much smaller.

Due to the minute size of its particles, Micronal PCM with its latent heat storage effect can be incorporated in virtually all building materials - from drywall boards to interior plaster. BASF uses the product for its own building projects.

The Dispersions & Pigments division of BASF develops, produces and markets a range of high-quality pigments, resins, additives and polymer dispersions worldwide. These raw materials are used in formulations for coatings and paints, printing and packaging products, construction chemicals, adhesives, fiber bondings, plastics as well as for electronic applications such as displays.

As MRC wrote previously, in early June 2014, BASF successfully closed the previously announced transaction to divest its PolyAd Services business unit to Edgewater Capital Partners, L.P., a private equity firm based in Cleveland, Ohio. PolyAd Services is a stand-alone global business that offers innovative specialty blends and services to solve additive incorporation problems for the plastics compounding and converting industry globally. The business serves a wide spectrum of plastic applications in industries, such as automotive, building and construction, packaging and electronics

BASF is the largest diversified chemical company in the world and is headquartered in Ludwigshafen, Germany. BASF produces a wide range of chemicals, for example solvents, amines, resins, glues, electronic-grade chemicals, industrial gases, basic petrochemicals and inorganic chemicals. The most important customers for this segment are the pharmaceutical, construction, textile and automotive industries. BASF had sales of about EUR74 billion in 2013 and over 112,000 employees as of the end of the year.
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MOSCOW (MRC) -- Singapore's Jurong Aromatics Corp expects to start its new aromatics plant at Jurong island in August, reported Apic-online with reference to a source close to the company.

The schedule is slightly delayed from an earlier plan of H2 July.

The plant will have capacity to produce 800,000 mt/year of paraxylene, 400,000 mt/year of benzene and 200,000 mt/year of orthoxylene.

"The company is likely to start test run in August and may be able to produce on-spec cargoes within August," the source said.

BP has a USD10 billion deal to supply JAC with condensate and offtake some of the new plant's production. Other companies with offtake deals include Vinmar, SK Energy, Glencore and Jiangsu Sanfangxiang.

JAC's shareholders are SK International Investment Singapore (30%), Sanhai (25%), Houston-based Arovin (10.5%), Glencore International (10%), Shefford Investments (9.5%), UVM Investment (5.1%), Singapore's EDB Investments (5%) and India-based Essar Projects (4.9%).

As MRC informed previously, South Korea's Samsung Total Petrochemicals is set to expand oil product sales to the domestic and export markets once it starts production of gasoil and jet fuel from its new Daesan aromatics plant later this year. The new plant will enable the petrochemical firm to produce gasoil for the very first time, from a 150,000 bpd condensate splitter primarily designed to supply feedstock for aromatics production. Capacity at the Samsung Total plant will comprise 1.05 mln mt of gasoil and 1.45 mln mt of jet fuel annually from its new aromatics plant that will start production as early as July this year.

Samsung Total is a 50-50 joint venture between South Korea's Samsung Group and the French chemical group Total.
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