Indorama Ventures sales revenue up 25% in Q1 2017

MOSCOW (MRC) -- On a year-on-year basis, sales revenue was up 25 per cent and production was higher by 24 per cent at Indorama Ventures Public Company Limited (IVL), said Fibre2fashion.

Core EBITDA for the company grew by 60 per cent to THB 7,681 million (USD221.74 million). The superior performance is a reflection of the strategic fit of IVL’s acquisitions of selected portfolios.

One of the world’s leading petrochemicals producers, IVL’s first quarter performance benefitted from expanded margins from successful integration of the High Value-Added (HVA) categories of polymers, fibres and packaging, and other assets acquired in 2016, and the added benefit of normalised production from its EOEG facility in the US.

In the 12 months ending March 31, 2017, IVL’s existing businesses, excluding the acquisitions made in 2016, delivered improved results as well from better capacity utilisation and operational excellence projects to reduce cost. The company reported volume growth in all geographic areas. Overall operating rate remained at 86 per cent over the previous 12 months in Q1 2017, which enabled margin expansion and better asset utilisation.

Core EBITDA in last 12 months was THB 30 billion, up 37 per cent year-on-year and ROCE improved to 12 per cent, reflecting the company’s prudent approach towards growth and capital allocation.

“We had a strong start to 2017 with Q1 performing very well on all of its key performance indicators. Through a unique integrated business model and growth in our HVA portfolio, we continue to outperform and deliver industry-leading performance despite continuing industry over-capacity. Our robust earnings and significant EBITDA growth in the quarter and last 12 months is a reflection of the successful deployment of our focused strategies of earning diversification, growth in key geographies and value-enhancing integration,” commented Aloke Lohia, Group CEO of IVL.

Over the past 5 years or so, IVL has invested substantially in creating a diversified earnings stream via its HVA portfolio. Diversification into HVA, which now accounts for 50 per cent of overall core EBITDA, has enabled the company to deliver robust earnings on a sustained basis.

Over the next two years, IVL is committed to investing around $1.2 billion on identified growth and maintenance-related projects. Additionally, and during the same period, the company believes that there will be financial headroom for further investments based on its projections of internal cash accruals and prudent borrowing capacity.

“We look forward to another year of disciplined growth. PTA expansion in Rotterdam in mid-2017 and startup of US gas cracker by end 2017 would not only provide strategic integration but are expected to further improve the quality and sustainable growth of earnings of IVL,” Lohia added. (RKS)

MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) – Honeywell UOP announced that it has signed an agreement with the Jordan Petroleum Refinery Company (JPRC) to facilitate a USD1.6 B expansion of its refinery in Zarqa, Jordan, said Hydrocarbonprocessing.

This expansion will increase the capacity of the facility to 120,000 bpd and will allow JPRC to upgrade the quality of its product to meet Euro V emissions specifications.

"The expansion of the Zarqa refinery is a very important project because, in addition to improving the quality of products, it will grow its capacity to 120,000 barrels per day," said JPRC CEO Abdul Karim Alaween. "It will help us meet the rising demand for fuel, which is growing at an average of 3% every year."

As part of the project, which is the fourth such expansion of the JPRC refinery, Honeywell UOP will provide manager licensing services, technology licensing, front-end engineering design consultancy services, and basic engineering design. It also will provide catalysts and process equipment, and training and start-up services.

Technologies provided by Honeywell UOP will include crude and vacuum distillation units—designed by Houston-based Process Consulting Services, Inc.—for distilling crude oil into various fractions. Honeywell UOP also will provide Unicracking and hydrotreating units to create clean distillate, as well as CCR Platforming, Penex, MinAlk, Merox and Selectfining units for producing cleaner-burning high-octane motor fuels, and a Polybed PSA unit for purifying hydrogen.

The Jordan Petroleum Refinery Company, Ltd. (JPRC) is the sole oil refining company of Jordan, publicly traded on the Amman Stock Exchange, with headquarters in the capital of Amman, and a refinery in Zarqa, 35 km east of Amman. The company manufactures a variety of fuels and refinery derivatives, and wholly owns a subsidiary oil marketing company. Moreover, JPRC operates a lube oil blending facility, three LPG bottling stations and LPG storage facilities in Amman, Zarqa and Irbid. The company also owns and operates an oil terminal and storage facilities in the port city of Aqaba.
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Haldia Petrochemicals Ltd (HPL) has brought on-stream its HDPE/LLDPE swing plant at the petrochemical complex located in the eastern Indian state of West Bengal, as per Apic-online.

A Polymerupdate source in India informed that the plant was restarted last week following an unplanned outage. The company has encountered technical glitch at the LLDPE line of the swing plant and was shut in end-February 2017.

Located at Haldia in the eastern Indian state of west Bengal, the complex can produce 700,000 mt/year of ethylene and 350,000 mt/year of propylene and provides feedstock to a 330,000 mt/year high density PE plant, a 370,000 mt/year HDPE/linear low PE swing plant and a 350,000 mt/year polypropylene unit.

As MRC informed before, in October 2016, HPL reported a massive fire at the petrochemical complex located in the eastern Indian state of West Bengal.

Haldia Petrochemicals Ltd is a modern naphtha based petrochemical complex at Haldia, West Bengal, India. Haldia has played the role of a catalyst in emergence of more than 500 downstream processing industries in West Bengal with a capacity to process more than 3,50,000 TPA of polymers, among which are polyethylene (PE) and polypropylene (PP).
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MOSCOW (MRC) – Honeywell UOP announced that Zhejiang Petrochemical Co. Ltd. will use four of its Polybed pressure swing adsorption (PSA) units to supply high-purity hydrogen for its new integrated refining and petrochemical complex in Zhoushan, Zhejiang Province, said Hydrocarbonprocessing.

The complex will use Honeywell Experion distributed control systems from Honeywell Process Solutions, and the PSA units will be controlled by Honeywell C300 controllers integrated with the Experion system.

Zhejiang Petrochemical earlier awarded petrochemical process technology licensing, engineering design and catalysts to Honeywell UOP. When completed, the new plant will be the largest crude-to-chemicals complex in China and one of the largest in the world, manufacturing petrochemicals to make plastic resins, films and fibers, as well as fuels.

"Our customers in China are selecting UOP’s PSA technology as an extremely competitive and reliable source of high purity hydrogen,” said John Gugel, vice president and general manager, Gas Processing and Hydrogen at Honeywell UOP. “This is critical because hydrogen is essential to the operation of any refinery or petrochemical plant, and the quality of that hydrogen helps determine the efficiency of the entire complex."
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- MAN Diesel & Turbo has entered a comprehensive cooperation agreement with Mitsui Engineering & Shipbuilding Co., Ltd. that will intensify their existing, joint business activities, as per Hydrocarbonprocessing.

The agreement was signed by Takao Tanaka, President & CEO of Mitsui Engineering & Shipbuilding and Dr. Uwe Lauber, CEO of MAN Diesel & Turbo.

"Together, we will offer a solution portfolio that is unique in today’s market," said Dr. Lauber.

The two companies are longstanding partners, with multiple previous collaborations, and have now agreed to deepen mutual activities within sales, production, R&D, and EPC (engineering, procurement, construction), with the potential for other business fields to be added in the future. The common goal is to enhance mutual business opportunities in a more timely and effective fashion.

"Mitsui Engineering & Shipbuilding and MAN Diesel & Turbo can look back at almost a century of successful cooperation in many fields of business, for example, two- and four-stroke engines for marine and stationary applications," said Tanaka. "With this agreement, we not only consolidate these cooperative efforts, but we also extend them to include the steam turbine and compressor segment."

"Along with the ongoing implementation of our technology in power plants and marine projects, we have also agreed to set a greater focus on our joint R&D efforts," said Dr. Lauber. "Driven by the global trends of decarbonization and digitalization, markets are in transition. We want to continue to combine our strengths to offer propulsion and energy solutions that help our customers to tackle tomorrow’s challenges. This will also include working more closely in the field of Floating Production Storage and Offloading systems (FPSO), as well as steam turbines and compressors-mainly for the Japanese market."

As MRC wrote before, in 2015, Mitsui & Co. announced that Fairway Methanol LLC, a 50-50 joint venture between Mitsui and US-based chemicals company Celanese, had commenced production of methanol at its planned annual production capacity of 1.3 million tons. In addition to access to reliable supplies of affordable gas feedstocks thanks to the US shale revolution, project officials also expect to benefit from the use of existing infrastructure belonging to Celanese situated in Pasadena, Texas.

Mitsui Chemicals is a leading manufacturer and supplier of value added specialty chemicals, plastics and materials for the automotive, healthcare, packaging, agricultural, building, and semiconductor and electronics markets. Mitsui Chemicals is a Japanese Chemicals company, a part of the Mitsui conglomerate. The company has a turnover of around 15 billion USD and has business interests in Japan, Europe, China, Southeast Asia and the USA. The company mainly deals in performance materials, petro and basic chemicals and functional polymeric materials.
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