Arkema starts new Kynar fluoropolymer production capacities in the United States

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Arkema has successfully brought on stream new Kynar PVDF capacities in its Calvert-City plant in the United States, as per the company's press release.

With this 20% increase in its US production capacities, Arkema will further support its customers’ strong demand in the region.

Through this investment and following the successful start-up of a similar expansion at its Changshu, China plant in 2017, Arkema, which operates fluoropolymer production facilities on the three major continents - Europe, North America, and Asia, further consolidates its world-leading position in PVDF.

This new capacity, which has been brought online ahead of schedule, will enable the Group to support its customers’ growth in America, particularly in emerging applications such as water filtration and in traditional markets such as the chemical process industry and high performance cables (automobile, fiber optics, oil industry).

This expansion also supports Arkema’s ambition to accelerate the development of its advanced materials, one of the key pillars of its future growth.

As MRC wrote before, in March 2017, Arkema completed the sale to INEOS of its 50% stake in Oxochimie, their oxo alcohols manufacturing joint venture, and of the associated business.

Arkema is a leading European supplier of chlorochemicals and PVC. Kynar and Kynar Flex are registered trademarks of Arkema Inc.
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Lotte Chemical Titan Holding Bhd's earnings fell in the first quarter ended March 31, 2018 mainly due to margin squeeze and foreign exchange (forex) loss, as per Thestar.

It announced on Monday that its earnings fell 28.6% to RM244.19mil from RM342.15mil a year ago. Its profit before tax decreased by RM86.5mil to RM300mil mainly due to the margin squeeze and forex loss.

Its revenue by 15.7% to RM2.214bil from RM1.914bil due to an increase in sales volume compared with a year ago which had a statutory routine turnaround.

"Average plant utilisation was 83% compared to 58% in corresponding quarter. For Q12017, this was mainly due to statutory routine plant turnaround for cracker 2 and other downstream plants in Malaysia.

Lotte said feedstock price increased from end 2017, while product price subsequently picked up with lagging effect.

Foreign exchange loss of RM44.6mil arose as a result of the revaluation of the group's US dollar IPO funds against the ringgit held for Indonesia project capital injection as a result of the strengthening of the ringgit against the US$ in Q1 2018.

This forex loss was partially offset by forex gain of RM34.9mil from operations in Q1 2018.

Earnings per share were 10.74 sen per share compared with 19.80 sen.

MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Indian refiners said they were in no hurry to replace Iranian oil with alternatives, counting on the fact that many Western countries have so far declined to join the United States in pulling out of a nuclear deal with Tehran, reported Reuters.

U.S. President Donald Trump said on Tuesday he would reimpose economic curbs on Iran after withdrawing the United States from the 2015 agreement that lifted sanctions against Tehran in exchange for limits on its nuclear programme.

But the leaders of Britain, Germany and France, which were signatories to the deal along with China and Russia, said in a joint statement that Trump's decision was a cause for "regret and concern" and were seeking to salvage the deal.

"We are largely unaffected," said A.K. Sharma, finance chief at Indian Oil Corp (IOC). "This time the situation is different from the last time. We hope clarity on the real impact of sanctions will emerge in 10-15 days."

IOC, India's biggest refiner, hopes to stick to its plans to buy as much as 180,000 barrels per day (bpd) of oil from Iran in 2018/19, more than double the volume in the last fiscal year that ended in March, Sharma said.

It would be difficult to replace Iranian oil given the "commercial terms" offered by Tehran, he said.

India, which has long-standing ties with Iran but also has close political relations with the United States, is Iran's top oil client after China. Its state refiners had chalked out plans to almost double oil imports from Iran this fiscal year, drawn to the virtual free shipping on oil sales offered by Iran, Reuters reported last month.

The South Asian country remained a big buyer of Iranian oil even during previous Western sanctions, though it had to cut purchases to win some waivers as the trade was mostly done in U.S. dollars. Since the 2015 agreement, however, Indian refiners have been settling oil dues with Iran in euros.

And given that three top European countries are still part of the deal, trade won't be affected much, at least in the short term, said R. Ramachandran, head of refineries at state-run Bharat Petroleum Corp.

In any case, oil sanctions will kick in in about six months, by which time most Indian refiners "may have consumed most of their Iranian volumes", Ramachandran said.

The U.S. Treasury Department has indicated that sanctions won't be reimposed immediately, and will take up to 180 days to allow Iranian oil customers and other companies involved in doing business with Tehran to make plans.

M.K. Surana, chairman of Hindustan Petroleum, said refiners may use that time to step up purchases from Iran.

The Indian oil ministry has not commented on the U.S. pullout, but the foreign ministry on Wednesday called for diplomacy to resolve the dispute over the nuclear deal with Iran.

Separately, South Korea said on Wednesday it would seek U.S. exemptions to buy Iranian oil, a path many big oil consumers are likely to follow in the wake of new U.S. sanctions on Tehran, which will tighten world oil markets and push up prices.
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) - Saudi Basic Industries Corp (SABIC), the world's No.4 petrochemical company, wants to buy about half of the USD4.6-billion Indian petchem project backed by Oil and Natural Gas Corp (ONGC), two sources familiar with the matter said, as per Reuters.

ONGC is a majority shareholder in ONGC Petro Additions Ltd (OPaL), which operates India's biggest petrochemical plant in western Gujarat state.

"They (SABIC} want to have a significant stake in OPaL, around 50 percent," said one of the sources.

Previously, ONGC had held talks about selling a stake in the project with Saudi Aramco and Petrochemical Industries Co, a unit of Kuwait Petroleum Corp, a second source said.

"SABIC is the latest entrant. Recently SABIC has held talks with ONGC officials about a stake purchase," the second source said. ONGC and SABIC did not respond to Reuters' requests for comment.

India and Saudi Arabia want to strengthen their trade ties. Saudi Aramco recently signed an initial deal with India to buy a 50 percent stake in a planned 1.2 million barrels per day west coast refinery and petrochemical project.

To expand its footprint in the world's third-biggest oil importer, Saudi Arabia is also scouting for a stake in existing major refineries, its energy minister Khalid al-Falih has said.

The first source said OPaL made an operating profit for the first time in 2017/18, increasing its appeal to prospective investors. "There are enough green shoots in the company," the source said.

India's per capita consumption of synthetic polymers, used to make various grades of plastics, is just 10 kg (22 lbs) a year, compared with a global average of about 32 kg.

The country's per capita consumption of petrochemicals will rise with its expanding middle class, growing income levels and increasing urbanisation, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said in March last year.
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- The incoming boss of BASF has thrown his weight behind the chemical titan's contentious strategy of keeping divergent businesses folded into one company, at a time when its major rivals such as DowDuPont are breaking themselves up, as per Reuters.

The comments from Martin Brudermueller, who will take over as CEO on Friday, provide clarity on a key strategic issue that is dividing investors, in marked contrast to predecessor Kurt Bock who would not be drawn on which path he favoured.

The German group has grown from a 19th century indigo dye workshop to a diversified juggernaut worth USD95 billion. It is the only major Western chemicals player banking on an integrated value chain - which it dubs "Verbund" - where a company owns businesses throughout the production process.

"We often hear the Verbund getting criticised for being too rigid. That's not true," said 56-year-old Brudermueller. "If you have everything under one roof, you can coordinate things much better, that is the sense in which we will develop it further. You wouldn't normally want to sell attractive businesses that are growing," he told Reuters and other reporters in remarks released.

At its Ludwigshafen headquarters and at five other hubs abroad, BASF runs close-knit networks of chemical reactors that churn out products as diverse as basic commodities, coatings, vitamins, drug ingredients and engineering plastics.

Bock, when asked in February whether BASF would continue to have diverse businesses under one roof or was considering other options, said the company might learn from what rivals did but did not say which path he favoured.

Both strategies have potential advantages; break-ups can create more focused individual companies and allow stronger units to attract investors unshackled from weaker ones, while an integrated model can reduce costs.

U.S. rival DowDuPont is planning to break up into a Materials Science division that relies on in-house basic petrochemicals plants and a Specialty Products unit selling more differentiated and complex materials. A third spin-off will focus on agriculture.

In other recent separation deals in the industry, Bayer spun off its Covestro plastics unit and is now selling down the shares, Air Products spun-off specialty chemicals unit Versum and coatings group Akzo Nobel is selling its specialty chemicals division.

BASF competes with DowDuPont in areas such as pesticides, engineering plastics, nutrition, insulation foams and petrochemicals. Its rival's three-way split will restore BASF's position as the world's largest chemical maker but some investors and analysts would rather see it lose that crown.
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