Linpac invests EUR8m at site in Pravia, Spain

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Fresh food packaging company Linpac has announced it is investing around EUR8m at its site in Pravia, Spain. The investment has been made to increase production capacity and to increase quality assurance and delivery of new innovations in 2016, says Plasticsnews.

The investment is part of a three year plan by the company worth EUR14.3m at the Spanish site. The company states that EUR3.8m has been allocated for 2017, along with a further EUR2.5m for 2018.

Linpac’s Pravia site manufactures PET containers and EPS trays for the fresh, prepared and frozen food markets.

Linpac highlights the Spanish site also sells PVC and technical films for high barrier sealing, thermoforming, vacuum bags and grocery bags, as well as aluminum, injection molded PP and thermoformed PET packaging.

As MRC informed earlier, UK packaging producer Linpac (Featherstone) has entered into a collaboration with Saudi conglomerate Zultec (Jeddah) to set up a state-of-the-art PET thermoforming facility in the Saudi kingdom.

Linpac Group Limited was founded in 1959 in Lincolnshire, England. It is now an international, GBP1.1 billion, mainly plastic packaging and supply chain manufacturing and services business, based in Birmingham, United Kingdom, and has 7,000 employees in 29 countries. The company manufactures food packaging, returnable transit packaging (RTP), rigid plastic containers, cartridges, bulk storage tanks, bulk containers, medical containers, spill control products, and GRP gratings and structures.
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MOSCOW (MRC) -- Spanish ABS maker Elix Polymers has announced it has introduced a new generation of natural fibre reinforced ABS, said Plasticsnews.

The new Elix Eco ABS-NF thermoplastic is suited for injection moulding applications and specific extrusion processes, says Elix. The company states applications for the material include the automotive and furniture sectors.

Properties of the new ABS include high stiffness, heat resistance, low moulding shrinkage ratios, low emissions and weight reduction when compared to glass fibre reinforced ABS, states Elix. Machines should not need modifying to process the material.

David Castaneda, operations director of Elix, said: "We believe that this new material offers a range of sustainability benefits that meet current industry trends. At the same time, it underlines Elix Polymers’ commitment to the establishment of a more environmentally sustainable product portfolio and establishes our company’s position as a leading supplier of eco-friendly ABS materials."

The material was aided in its development by EEA and Norway Grants. The EEA Grants and Norway Grants represent the contribution of Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway to reducing economic and social disparities and to strengthening bilateral relations with 16 EU countries in Central and Southern Europe and the Baltics.

Elix highlights it is the first time a European ABS producer has been given a European grant for a project to investigate new sustainable ABS materials and composites.

As MRC informed earlier, in April 2015, ELIX Polymers introduced the new range of high heat ABS grades with very low emissions and high flowability. This latest innovative product development meets the stringent requirements of the automotive industry and is suitable for all interior and exterior applications.

ELIX Polymers is one of the most important manufacturers of ABS resins and derivatives in Europe, with 40 years of experience in engineering plastics and an installed capacity of 180,000/year from their plant in Tarragona (Spain) to the world. The operation starts in 1975, when the Tarragona ABS and SAN production plant was inaugurated.
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MOSCOW (MRC) -- Indian Oil is planning to expand capacity at its naphtha cracker in Panipat by 2019, the executive director of the refiner's petrochemical division told news agency Reuters.

The expansion would increase capacity of the cracker in northern India from about 850,000 tpy to 1.2 million tpy by 2019, the report says. It would cost about half-a-billion dollars, S Mitra said at a condensate and naphtha forum in Singapore.

"Demand in (India) for polymers is growing," said Mitra, adding that baout 90% of the polymers that Indian Oil produces is for domestic use.

However, it is unlikely that Indian Oil would build a brand-new naphtha cracker in India in the short-term because of challenges related to obtaining naphtha from one single refinery.

The Panipat cracker currently needs over 2 million tpy of naphtha feedstock. It takes that feedstock from several nearby refineries, including Indian Oil's Mathura and Haldia plants. This will continue even after the Panipat cracker's expansion, Mitra said.

Indian Oil, India's top refiner by capacity, exports an average of 800,000 tpy of naphtha through various ports including Dahej, Haldia and Chennai.

As MRC reported earlier, India's largest refiner and oil marketing company Indian Oil Corporation's Rs 34,555-crore 15 million tonnes per annum Paradip Refinery has been commissioned in phases from March 2015 onwards.

Indian Oil Corporation Limited, or IndianOil, is an Indian state-owned oil and gas corporation with its headquarters in New Delhi, India.
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MOSCOW (MRC) -- Shell’s cracker at Moerdijk in the Netherlands remains off line following a small compressor fire in a compressor on Nov. 11, said Chemanager-online.

The oil and petrochemical group so far has not disclosed when the facility with capacity to produce 900,000 t/y of ethylene, 500,000 t/y of propylene and 115,000 t/y of butadiene will go back on stream but market insiders predict that it will be down at least until the beginning of December. Shell has not declared force majeure.

This is the second outage of the cracker in the recent past. Taken off line in October 2014, due to a fire, the facility only returned to production in mid-July of this year. The SM/PO plant at the same site owned by Shell’s Ellba joint venture with BASF, went down in June 2014 and customers have been on allocation since then. According to reports, the plant will come back on line by the end of this year or the beginning of next year.

In a scathing report on the Ellba incident, the Dutch safety board said Shell, which operates the Moerdik site, did not follow internal procedures, did not learn sufficient lessons from previous incidents and made incorrect assumptions about basic chemical reactions.

Royal Dutch Shell plc is an Anglo-Dutch multinational oil and gas company headquartered in The Hague, Netherlands and with its registered office in London, United Kingdom. It is the biggest company in the world in terms of revenue and one of the six oil and gas "supermajors". Shell is vertically integrated and is active in every area of the oil and gas industry, including exploration and production, refining, distribution and marketing, petrochemicals, power generation and trading.
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Solvay has been recognized as one of the world’s most innovative companies, with a ranking in the Thomson Reuters 2015 Top 100 Global Innovator, said the producer on its site.

The methodology uses a scientific, unbiased approach to identify the organizations that are dedicated to innovation, committed to protecting patent rights globally, and whose inventions have worldwide influence.

As MRC reported before, in early July 2015, Solvay and INEOS announce the start-up of their Joint Venture INOVYN, a world-class competitive player in chlorovinyls, following European Commission approval

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 пїЅ fluoropolymers, fluoroelastomers, fluorinated fluids, semi-aromatic polyamides, sulfone polymers, aromatic ultra polymers, high-barrier polymers and cross-linked high-performance compounds.
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