Denka intends to boost competitiveness by streamlining utilities at Chiba site

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Denka Co. Ltd., formerly Denki Kagaku Kogyo Kabushiki Kaisha, has decided to boost the competitiveness of its Chiba, Japan, facility by streamlining its utilities, as per GV.

This move, Denka explained, is in line with the company’s policy of promoting close cooperation among companies throughout the Maruzen Petrochemical complex in Chiba, including oil refineries and plants producing ethylene and its derivatives.

Currently, Denka has two boilers at Chiba that provide steam and electricity for its styrene monomer and styrene based functional resin production, as well as polymer processing facilities. The company plans to shut down one boiler and associated power generation system in June in conjunction with scheduled maintenance, while the other boiler, which is equipped with a highly efficient gas turbine power generation system, will continue to operate.

The resulting shortfall in steam supply will be met by Maruzen’s Chiba ethylene facilities under an agreement between Denka and Maruzen.

Denka noted this plan will help decrease both steam procurement cost and costs for the maintenance, upgrading and repair of boilers, resulting in an estimated annual savings of about JPY 300-million. At the same time, Maruzen will benefit because the Denka facilities will consume a steady supply of steam by-product from Maruzen’s ethylene production.

Going forward, Denka said it also plans to increase cooperation with other companies in the Maruzen complex to enhance the competitiveness of the complex as a whole and decrease the site’s total carbon dioxide emissions.

As MRC reported earlier, in 2013, Denka, in order to accelerate business development to meet market demand, reorganized six business divisions into four units and renamed some of its departments.

Thus, the former Electronic Materials, Styrene, Chemicals, Cement and Special Cement Additives, Living and Environmental Products and Medical Sciences Divisions were transformed into the Elastomers & Performance Plastics, Infrastructure & Inorganic Materials, Electronics & Innovative Products and Life Sciences & Environment Products business units. In addition, the Elastomers & Acetylene Black Dept. was renamed the Organic Chemicals Dept., the Agri-Products Dept. is now the Fertilizer Dept., and the Adhesives & Solutions Dept. is the Tapes & Adhesives Dept.
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MOSCOW (MRC) -- Toray Industries Inc. has announced that it and Toray Carbon Magic Co., Ltd. (TCM) held the inauguration ceremony for a new plant of Carbon Magic (Thailand) Co. Ltd. (CMTH), a subsidiary manufacturing carbon fiber reinforced plastic (CFRP) parts. The ceremony was held at the Saha Group industrial park in Sriracha, Chonburi, Thailand, reported GV.

The establishment of the new CMTH plant is part of the move to enhance production capacity of TCM and CMTH announced in May 2014. In addition to the enhancement of functions with the new TCM office building completed in December 2014, CMTH newly established integrated mass production plant covers the processes from molding to coating in the about 22,000 m2 premise newly leased from Saha Group. Since coming under the Toray Group from Dome Group in April 2013, TCM and its Thai production base of CMTH have been adding the competitive edge of Toray’s high quality materials to TCM’s outstanding design technology and CMTH’s mass production cost competitiveness, which has led to even higher rating and expectations from the market.

The current enhancement of TCM and CMTH is in response to the market needs for their products, which are not only for premium vehicles and motorbikes, the company’s specialty for long, but also for new fields such as aircraft and trains as well as wheel chairs and prosthetic limbs, for which the companies are seeing rapid increase in inquiries for design, development of prototype and mass production.

Toray Group positions TCM as the core base of the advanced composite business and aims to develop new markets and increase applications for CFRP parts, in addition to the existing automobile field, in cooperation with other composite bases outside japan such as Euro Advanced Carbon Fiber Composites GmbH (EACC) in Germany and Plasan Carbon Composites, Inc. (PCC) in the U.S. Moreover, the Group will enhance the supply chain starting from carbon fibers in upstream to base materials in middle stream and to CFRP composite in downstream by including large tow carbon fibers of Zoltek Companies, Inc., which joined the Group in February 2014, and Composite Materials (Italy) s.r.l (CIT) and Delta Tech S.p.A with its subsidiary Delta Preg S.p.A, two Italian prepreg manufacturing bases which became Toray subsidiaries one after another in 2015.

Under the medium-term management program Project AP-G 2016, which was launched in fiscal year 2014 and is scheduled to be accomplished in fiscal year 2016, the Toray Group is driving forward the Green Innovation Business Expansion (GR) Project in a group-wide endeavor to expand the business that contributes to solving environmental problems and resource and energy issues. The carbon fiber composite material business, which improves mileage through weight reduction of automobiles and aircraft and contributes to reduction of CO2 emissions, is at the center of this GR Project, and the Toray Group is determined to continue contributing to the realization of a sustainable society through expansion of this business.

As MRC wrote previously, in December 2014, Toray Industries, Inc. announced that the company and its subsidiary Toray Advanced Materials Korea, Inc. would expand the production facility for high-performance polypropylene (PP) spunbond at P.T. Toray Polytech Jakarta (TPJ) by 18,000 tons per year. After the enhancement, the production capacity of TPJ will be about 37,000 tons per year, boosting the Toray Group-wide PP spunbond production capacity to about 153,000 tons per year. The added production facility at TPJ is expected to start operating in September 2016.

Toray Industries is a multinational corporation headquartered in Japan that specializes in industrial products centered around technologies in organic synthetic chemistry, polymer chemistry, and biochemistry. Its founding business areas were fibers and textiles, as well as plastics and chemicals. Toray Group Malaysia companies are involved in four main businesses -- polyester fibres, textiles, plastic resins and polyester films.
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MOSCOW (MRC) -- Saudi Kayan Petrochemical Co. has awarded CTCI a contract for the engineering, procurement and construction of an additional ethylene cracking furnace in Jubail, Saudi Arabia, as per TPS.

Last year, the Saudi Ministry of Petroleum and Mineral Resources agreed to increase Saudi Kayan’s allocations of ethane, enabling the company to increase ethylene and ethylene oxide production capacity. Saudi Kayan said it would add 93,000 t/y of ethylene capacity.

CTCI said the contract covers front-end engineering design, detailed engineering design, procurement, construction, pre-commissioning, commissioning assistance, training of Saudi Kayan personnel and start-up of the furnace.

The project, with an estimated value of USD94.5-million, is expected to be completed during the second half of 2017, Saudi Kayan disclosed in a filing with Tadawul (stock exchange).

Saudi Basic Industries Corp. earlier this year awarded CTCI a front-end engineering design contract for affiliate Saudi Kayan’s ethylene oxide and ethylene glycol project in Jubail.

As MRC wrote before, in mid-February 2015, Saudi Kayan Petrochemical Co brought forward by one month maintenance plans for some units at its complex in Jubail. The Saudi Basic Industries Corp (SABIC) affiliate started the shutdown on March 1. The shutdown had been postponed from Oct. 31, 2015.

Saudi Kayan Petrochemical Company is a manufacturing affiliate of the Saudi Basic Industries Corporation (Sabic).
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- PetroChina’s refining and chemicals business segment recorded an operating profit of 4.88 billion renminbi (USD751.2 million) in 2015 compared with an operating loss of Rmb23.5 billion in 2014, said Chemweek.

PetroChina’s chemicals business alone had an operating profit of Rmb193 million in 2015 compared with an operating loss of about Rmb16.4 billion in 2014, as a result of optimization of the product structure and efforts to control costs, the company says. The refining business recorded an operating profit of Rmb4.69 billion in 2015 compared with an operating loss of about Rmb7.15 billion in 2014. Sales in the refining and chemicals segment decreased 24.1% in 2015, however, compared with 2014, to Rmb642.4 billion mainly because of a fall in prices of refined and chemical products, PetroChina says. Sales for the chemicals business alone have not been disclosed.

In 2015, the slow global economic recovery resulted in lower consumption of chemicals, PetroChina says. As a result, there was excess capacity and supply exceeded demand in the chemical products market. With the substantial fall in crude oil price and the fierce competition in the chemicals market, the prices of chemical products kept dropping after a rise in the middle of 2015; but overall, the fall in product prices was less than the fall in crude oil price, leading to an overall improvement of results in the chemical industry, PetroChina says. PetroChina, in 2015, allocated more resources to its chemicals business, and increased the production of products with merchantability, high profitability, and high added value, the company says.

PetroChina produced 5.03 million m.t. of ethylene in 2015, up 1.1% compared with 2014. PetroChina’s production of plastics increased 3.3% in 2015 compared with 2014, to 8.21 million m.t.; production of fiber intermediates increased 4.3%, to 1.34 million m.t.; but output of synthetic rubber decreased by 4.3%, to 713,000 m.t.; and production of urea decreased by 3.6%, to 2.56 million m.t.

Capital expenditure (capex) in PetroChina’s refining and chemicals business was Rmb15.7 billion in 2015 compared with Rmb30.9 billion in 2014. PetroChina expects capex in the company’s refining and chemicals business will be about Rmb18.7 billion in 2016.

PetroChina Company Limited, is a Chinese oil and gas company and is the listed arm of state-owned China National Petroleum Corporation, headquartered in Dongcheng District, Beijing. It is China's biggest oil producer.
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- MEGlobal, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Equate Petrochemical Co., plans to construct a new world-scale monoethylene glycol (MEG) manufacturing facility at Dow’s Oyster Creek site in Freeport, Texas, as per Hydrocarbonprocessing.

The new Oyster Creek MEG facility will be owned by MEGlobal and is the company’s first manufacturing unit in the US. The new MEGlobal plant will create 1,400 construction jobs at the project’s peak, and the company will employ approximately 50 new workers when it goes on stream in mid-2019.

"The Oyster Creek site provides MEGlobal with greater flexibility to satisfy our customers’ needs for consistent and reliable delivery of ethylene glycol products, especially in the growing US and Asian markets," said Ramesh Ramachandran, president of MEGlobal International FZE.

Additionally, the new site will benefit through a long-term ethylene supply agreement with Dow from its new ethylene cracker.

"Establishing MEG production in the US Gulf Coast is an important investment for us as it greatly enhances our global footprint and is directly aligned to our growth strategy to maximize value as a leading ethylene glycol producer and supplier," said Mohammad Husain, president and CEO of Equate Petrochemical Co., an international joint venture between Petrochemical Industries Co. (PIC), Dow Chemical, Boubyan Petrochemical Co. (BPC) and Qurain Petrochemical Industries Co. (QPIC).

"Additionally, ethylene producer economics through a long-term supply agreement with Dow provide a unique competitiveness for the production plant," he added.

"The MEGlobal investment in the US Gulf Coast fits the diversification and growth strategy of PIC," said Mohammed Abdullatif Al-Farhoud, CEO of PIC. "We continue to look for opportunities in the petrochemical area across the globe to expand our footprint and diversify our portfolio. We are very pleased that our US Gulf Coast investment strategy is moving towards implementation."

MEG is used in a number of market applications, including polyester fibers, polyethylene terephthalate (PET) bottles and packaging, antifreeze and coolants, paints, resins, deicing fluids, heat transfer fluids and construction materials.

As MRC wrote before, global MEG production is likely cross 28.74 mln tons by 2017. In 2011, the world production of MEG grew by over 1 mln tons, crossing the 20.65 mln ton mark, as per Merchant Research & Consulting.

Established in 1995, Equate Petrochemical Company is an international joint venture between Petrochemical Industries Company (PIC), The Dow Chemical Company (Dow), Boubyan Petrochemical Company (BPC) and Qurain Petrochemical Industries Company (QPIC). Commencing production in 1997, Equate is the single operator of a fully integrated world-scale manufacturing facility producing over 5 million tons annually of high-quality petrochemical products which are marketed throughout the Middle East, Asia, Africa and Europe.
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