Wacker Chemie expands production capacity for dispersions in USA

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Wacker Chemie AG is expanding its existing vinyl acetate-ethylene copolymer (VAE) dispersions production facilities in the United States, said the company in its press release.

The Munich-based chemical company will add a new reactor with an annual capacity of 85,000 metric tons at its Calvert City site, investing an amount of aroundEUR50 million in the site’s capacity and infrastructure. This makes the complex the largest of its kind in the Americas. The new reactor is scheduled to come on stream by mid-2015.

WACKER’s production facility in Calvert City: The additional annual capacity of 85.000 tons of VAE dispersion will be used for applications in the paints and coatings, adhesives, construction, paper, carpet and nonwoven industries.

WACKER has further added an ethylene pipeline to the Calvert City facility for increasing the long-term reliability of raw material supply at the site. “This investment in our continuous raw-material supply is an important step: it not only makes a key contribution to supply security in the years to come, but also to the cost-efficient production of our dispersions,” explained John Fotheringham, vice president of Dispersions at WACKER POLYMERS.

As MRC reported earlier, Wacker Chemie AG launched its new production plant for ethylene-vinyl-acetate copolymer (EVA) dispersions at its Ulsan site in South Korea. The additional 40,000 tonnes from the second reactor line increases the site's EVA-dispersion capacity to a total of 90,000 tonnes per year. The production capacity of the site, thus, almost doubled, making the plant complex one of the biggest of its kind in South Korea.

Wacker Chemie AG is a worldwide operating company in the chemical business, founded 1914. The company is controlled by the Wacker-family holding more than 50 percent of the shares. The corporation is operating more than 25 production sites in Europe, Asia, and the Americas. The product range includes silicone rubbers, polymer products like ethylene vinyl acetate redispersible polymer powder, chemical materials, polysilicon and wafers for semiconductor industry.

MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Sinopec Yangzi Petrochemical is in plans to shut its high density polyethylene/linear low density polyethylene (HDPE/LLDPE) swing plant for maintenance turnaround, reported Apic-online.

A Polymerupdate source in China informed that the plant is planned to be shut in mid-April 2015. It is likely to remain off-stream for around 15 days.

Located in Nanjing, China, the plant has a production capacity of 200,000 mt/year.

We remind that, as MRC informed earlier, in May 2014, SIBUR, a leading Russian gas processing and petrochemicals company, signed a contract with Sinopec to establish a joint venture for the construction of a 50,000 tpa butadiene nitrile rubber plant at the Shanghai Chemical Industry Park, 50km south of Shanghai. Sinopec’s share in the joint venture will be 74.9% and SIBUR’s will be 25.1%.

Sinopec Corp. is one of the largest scale integrated energy and chemical companies with upstream, midstream and downstream operations. Its refining and ethylene capacity ranks No.2 and No.4 globally. The Company has 30,000 sales and distribution networks of oil products and chemical products, its service stations are now ranked third largest in the world.
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Export prices of polyvinyl chloride (PVC) in the United States continued to grow. Offer prices for March shipment to the CIS markets came very close to USD900/tonne, according to ICIS-MRC Price report.

Stable demand for North American PVC from both the domestic market and foreign markets continued to boost export prices. Offer prices for March PVC shipments from the United States to the CIS countries reached USD880-900/tonne CFR.

The March rise in prices of North American PVC was quite significant, as offer prices for February shipments of the resin were heard in the range of USD780-820/tonne CFR.

At the same time, suppliers of North American PVC said demand for resin from the CIS markets has decreased significantly in recent months. Russian and Belarusian companies completely refused from procurement of resin in the US, whereas Ukrainian companies focused on purchasing in Europe and Russia.
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Exxon Mobil Corp. sold USD8 billion of debt in its biggest bond offering ever and the largest energy-related deal since the plunge in crude prices that began in July, according to Bloomberg.

The world’s largest oil company by market value boosted the deal by about 14% after previously marketing USD7 billion of debt, according to a person with knowledge of the transaction who asked not to be identified citing lack of authorization to speak publicly. Irving, Texas-based Exxon issued the securities as a combination of fixed- and floating-rate notes in the seven-part sale.

Exxon holds top triple-A credit ratings from Moody’s Investors Service and Standard & Poor’s, making it one of only three U.S. corporations - Johnson & Johnson and Microsoft Corp. are the others - that stand on nearly equal footing with governments in debt markets. Investors are hungry for the high-quality bonds, as they offer higher yields than sovereign debt.

"There’s tremendous appetite from the investor community to buy high-value corporate names like Exxon and Chevron," said Dan Heckman, a senior fixed-income strategist at U.S. Bank Wealth Management in Kansas City, Missouri.

As MRC wrote previously, Exxon Mobil Corp. shook off the chill of sanctions and continued to snap up drilling rights in Russia last year, giving it more exploration holdings in Vladimir Putin’s backyard than in the US. Taking the long view, Exxon boosted its Russian holdings to 63.7 million acres in 2014 from 11.4 million at the end of 2014, according to data from US regulatory filings. That dwarfs the 14.6 million acres of rights Exxon holds in the U.S., which until last year was its largest exploration prospect.

ExxonMobil is the largest non-government owned company in the energy industry and produces about 3% of the world's oil and about 2% of the world's energy.
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Tosoh (Guangzhou) Chemical Industries, Inc is in plans to restart its polyvinyl chloride (PVC) plant, as per Apic-online.

A Polymerupdate source in China informed that the plant is planned to be restarted in end-March 2015. It was shut in end-February for maintenance turnaround.

Located at Guangzhou in China, the plant has a production capacity of 220,000 mt/year.

We remind that, as MRC reported before, on 9 October 2014, Inner Mongolia Yili shut its PVC plant in China for maintenance turnaround. It remained off-stream for around one month. Located at Erdos in Inner Mongolia, the plant has a production capacity of 500,000 mt/year.

Besides, earlier last year, Formosa Plastics Corp (FPC) shut down its PVC plant in China for maintenance turnaround on September 9, 2014. It was planned to remain shut for around one month. Located at Ningbo in Zhejiang province of China, the plant has a production capacity of 400,000 mt/year.
MRC