Kenya enforces major plastic bag ban

MOSCOW (MRC) -- The Kenyan government has enforced a major ban on the use, manufacture and importation of all plastic bags for commercial and household packaging, said Plasticsnewseurope.

The ban, which was announced 28 Feb, will apply to two categories of bags: the carrier bag, a "bag constructed with handles, and with or without gussets," and the flat bag, a "bag constructed without handles, and with or without gussets."

Infringement of the ban, according to the Kenyan government’s notice in February, can carry imprisonment of up to four years or a fine between EUR16,000 and EUR32,000.

The country’s environment ministry says that roughly 100 million plastic bags are handed out annually in Kenya by supermarkets alone.

The purpose of the Government to ban the use of plastic bags is to avoid health and environmental effects resulting from the use of plastic bags, including impacts on soil quality, literring and damage to ecosystems.

In its February notice, the environment ministry encouraged manufactures of all plastic bags to invest in the production of alternative bags.
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MOSCOW (MRC) -- Air Liquide Engineering & Construction has signed a cooperation agreement with Mitsubishi Chemical Corporation to license MCC’s Butene-to-crude-Butadiene technology used in the petrochemical industry, as per Hydrocarbonprocessing.

Mitsubishi Chemical Corporation (MCC) has developed this state-of-the art oxidative dehydrogenation technology of n-butene to produce crude Butadiene and verified the viability in a demonstration plant at MCC Mizushima, Japan.

Butadiene is an important industrial chemical used in many day-to-day products, mainly as synthetic rubber for the automotive industry. Butadiene can also be used as a raw material for the production of products such as polymers, plastics and paper chemicals.

Air Liquide Engineering & Construction can now offer its customers a unique integrated solution for both, butene dehydrogenation and butadiene extraction, the company said in a press release. This allows to extend the production of Butadiene from the conventional extraction from a Naphtha Cracker product to on-purpose production based on a wider range of feedstocks.

As MRC informed before, in May 2016, Air Liquide said it had completed the USD13.4-billion acquisition of Airgas, which was announced November, 2015.

Mitsubishi Chemical with headquarters in Tokyo, Japan, is a diversified chemical company involved in petrochemicals, polymers, agrochemicals, speciality chemicals and pharmaceuticals. The company's main focus is on three business pillars: petrochemicals, performance and functional products, and health care.

L'Air Liquide S.A., or Air Liquide, is a French multinational company which supplies industrial gases and services to various industries including medical, chemical and electronic manufacturers.
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MOSCOW (MRC) — Refiners across Asia are cranking up output to send fuel to the United States, where fallout from Hurricane Harvey has left around a quarter of the nation's refineries shut down, said Reuters.

The storm, which hit Texas a week ago as a hurricane and moved on to Louisiana, has caused historic floods and forced the closure of about a quarter of US refining capacity, equal to about 4.5 MMbpd in output. The resulting supply crunch has caused prices to spike—in gasoline, diesel, jet fuel and other fuels—and not just in the United States.

Attracted by soaring refining margins, known as crack spreads in the industry, Asian fuel makers from Singapore to South Korea have ramped up operating rates to sell as many cargoes as possible to the United States. "With crack spreads blowing out, the US is going to need products ... so Asian and other refiners are going to have to ramp up runs," said Tony Nunan, oil risk manager at Mitsubishi Corp in Tokyo.

Most refiners in Asia have a policy of not commenting on operations, but refinery sources across the region said their plants were maximising runs to reap profits from higher fuel prices and to sell to the United States. "Everybody is looking for cargoes. It's a good money-making opportunity, so we will sell whatever we have after leaving sufficient supplies to meet domestic demand," said an official at Taiwan's CPC Corp.

Singapore refinery margins, a benchmark for Asia, have jumped by around a third since Harvey made landfall last Friday to USD10.60 a barrel, the highest since January 2016 and the highest for this time of year in a decade.

Sources at Singapore Refining Company (SRC) said they were sending spare cargoes to the United States, and a source from a Thai refiner said its plant is maximizing output in response to the jump in refining margins. "It's a great opportunity to sell fuel that has sat in storage during the last few years of oversupply," one trader with another refinery in Singapore said.

In China, where the fuel export market is tightly regulated, state oil refiners are seeking extra oil-product export quotas for the fourth quarter to profit from the higher margins and to offload a domestic surplus. Analysts say fuel prices will remain elevated for some time as damaged US refineries are repaired and fuel shipments cross from Europe and Asia to the United States.

US bank Goldman Sachs said this week that many US refineries could take months to repair flood damage and become operational again. "The price (for fuels) will continue to be supported until flows are reinstated or imports from Europe and elsewhere pick up," said Ole Hansen, head of commodity strategy at Denmark's Saxo Bank.

Even refiners without the capacity to send cargoes to the United States are reaping benefits from the supply crunch caused by Harvey. "We were running at maximum capacity even before the Hurricane, so we don't really have much room to boost our capacity ... but we expect our profitability to improve," said a source at SK Innovation, parent company of South Korea's top refiner SK Energy.

Shares prices for several major Asian refiners, such as SK Innovation and fellow South Korean S-Oil Corp, have climbed to six-year highs this week as higher margins boosted profit potential. Thailand's Thai Oil climbed to its highest in nearly 10 yr, while Taiwan's Formosa Petrochemical also rallied.
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Trinseo, a global materials company and manufacturer of plastics, latex binders and synthetic rubber, and its affiliate companies in Europe has announced price increases for all polystyrene (PS), acrylonitrile-butadiene-styrene (ABS) and acrylonitrile-styrene copolymer (SAN) grades, as per the company's press release.

Effective September 1, 2017, or as existing contract terms allow, the contract and spot prices for the products listed below rose as follows:

- STYRON general purpose polystyrene grades (GPPS) - by EUR210 per metric ton;
- STYRON and STYRON A-TECH high impact polystyrene grades (HIPS) - by EUR210 per metric ton;
- MAGNUM ABS resins - by EUR140 per metric ton;
- TYRIL SAN resins - by EUR160 per metric ton.

As MRC wrote before, Trinseo last raised its contract and spot prices for all PS and SAN grades in Europe effective July 4, 2017, or as existing contract terms allowed, as follows:

- STYRON GPPS - by EUR45 per metric ton;
- STYRON and STYRON A-TECH HIPS - by EUR45 per metric ton;
- TYRIL SAN resins - by EUR25 per metric ton.

Trinseo is a global materials company and manufacturer of plastics, latex and rubber. Trinseo's technology is used by customers in industries such as home appliances, automotive, building & construction, carpet, consumer electronics, consumer goods, electrical & lighting, medical, packaging, paper & paperboard, rubber goods and tires. Formerly known as Styron, Trinseo completed its renaming process in 1Q 2015. Trinseo had approximately USD3.7 billion in net sales in 2016, with 15 manufacturing sites around the world, and nearly 2,200 employees.
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Honeywell announced that CNPC Guangxi Petrochemical Company has successfully converted its existing pressure swing adsorption (PSA) unit to Honeywell UOP Polybed PSA technology, enabling it to produce high-purity hydrogen, as per Hydrocarbonprocessing.

The newly upgraded unit, located in Qinzhou in China's Guangxi Province, now supplies hydrogen at 99.9% purity and with increased hydrogen recovery for Guangxi Petrochemical's hydrotreating units, which use the hydrogen to extract impurities from the feedstock.

The Honeywell UOP Polybed PSA technology addresses several issues faced by many manufacturers in China, such as low recovery rates and purity, control valve leakage and poor or inconsistent performance.

The PSA process uses proprietary UOP adsorbents to remove impurities at high pressure from hydrogen-containing process streams, allowing hydrogen to be recovered and upgraded to more than 99.9% purity to meet refining needs. In addition to recovering and purifying hydrogen from steam reformers and refinery off-gases, the Polybed PSA system can be used to produce hydrogen from other sources such as ethylene off-gas, methanol off-gas and partial-oxidation synthesis gas.

As MRC wrote previously, in November 2016, China’s Jilin Connell Chemical Industry Co. selected Honeywell UOP’s Advanced methanol-to-olefins (MTO) process to tap domestic coal resources to produce ethylene and propylene. Jilin Connell is the ninth company to license the Honeywell UOP technology, which produces superior yields at lower cost compared to competing technologies. The new plant, scheduled for completion in 2017, will be located in Jilin City in China’s Jilin Province, and will convert domestic sources of methanol into 300 Mtpy of ethylene and propylene. The new plant’s offtake will be supplied to ethylene oxide and propylene oxide manufacturers currently operating in the same industrial park.
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