Hanwha Chemical to Start Anew as Hanwha Solution in 2020

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Hanwha Chemical will be renamed as Hanwha Solution in January next year after merging with Hanwha Q CELLS and Advanced Materials, reported BusinessKorea.

Hanwha Chemical will merge with Hanwha Q CELLS and Advanced Materials in January of next year and start anew as Hanwha Solution.

Hanwha Chemical announced on Dec. 12 that it will hold a general shareholders meeting on Jan. 2, 2020 to pass an amendment to the articles of incorporation that include a change in the company name.

The new name Hanwha Solution means that he company will provide new solutions through business integration in the face of growing uncertainties at home and abroad.

"We plan to cope with the rapidly changing business environment at home and abroad by integrating the oil and material businesses, which are seeking to make a leap through the development of high value-added products, and the photovoltaic business which leads the global market," a Hanwha official said. The company intends to promote the even growth of its flagship businesses through business diversification and increase corporate value by boosting management efficiency and business synergies.

As MRC informed before, Hanwha Chemical took off-stream its polyvinyl chloride (PVC) plant in South Korea for maintenance in mid-June, 2019. The plant remained under maintenance for about 10 days. Located at Yeosu, South Korea, the PVC plant have a production capacity of 300,000 mt/year.

According to MRC's ScanPlast report, exports of suspension polyvinyl chloride (SPVC) from Russia totalled 175,600 tonnes in the first eleven months of 2019, up by 22% year on year. Imports increased more significantly - by 230% year on year to 48,500 tonnes.

Hanwha Group is one of the largest business conglomerate in South Korea. Founded in 1952 as Korea Explosives Inc., the group has grown into a large multi-profile business conglomerate, with diversified holdings stretching from explosives, their original business, to retail to financial services.
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- President Donald Trump signed off on a phase-one trade deal with China, averting the Dec. 15 introduction of a new wave of U.S. tariffs on about USD160 billion of consumer goods from the Asian nation, according to people familiar with the matter, said Bloomberg.

The deal presented to Trump by trade advisers Thursday included a promise by the Chinese to buy more U.S. agricultural goods, according to the people. Officials also discussed possible reductions of existing duties on Chinese products, they said. The terms have been agreed but the legal text has not yet been finalized, the people said. A White House spokesperson declined to comment.

While there was no official confirmation from the government in Beijing on Friday, an announcement is expected in Washington as early as today, according to people familiar with the Americans’ plans. One possible option is for U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer to sign the agreement with Chinese Ambassador Cui Tiankai, according to people briefed on the matter.

Global stocks hit a record high for the first time since early 2018 and bond yields climbed on optimism over trade. On Thursday, Trump tweeted that the U.S. and China are “VERY close” to signing a “BIG” trade deal, also sending equities higher. The yuan surged the most in a year, rising above 7 per dollar.

“They want it, and so do we!” he tweeted five minutes after equity markets opened in New York, sending stocks to new records.

The administration has reached out to allies on Capitol Hill and in the business community to issue statements of support once the announcement is made, people said. Before meeting his trade advisers, Trump engaged with members of the Business Roundtable, which represents some of the largest U.S. companies, they said.

Trump changed his mind on deals with China before. Negotiators have been working on the terms of the phase-one deal for months after the president announced in October that the two nations had reached an agreement that could be put on paper within weeks.

The U.S. has added a 25% duty on about $250 billion of Chinese products and a 15% levy on another $110 billion of its imports over the course of a roughly 20-month trade war. Discussions now are focused on reducing those rates by as much as half, as part of the interim agreement Trump announced almost nine weeks ago.
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- BASF to expand production capacity of acrylic dispersions in Malaysia, said Asiapacificcoatingsjournal.

BASF intends to double its acrylic dispersions capacity by constructing a new manufacturing line at its Pasir Gudang site in Malaysia.

The project aims to give a reliable supply of high-quality dispersion formulations to clients in the rapidly increasing ASEAN, New Zealand and Australian markets.

This new development also includes upgrading the facility's waste water treatment plant by adding a condensed water stripping system.

As MRC informed before, in early September 2019, SIBUR, the largest petrochemical comples in Russia and Eastern Europe, and BASF, Geman petrochemical major, agreed to closely cooperate on sustainable development to share their best practices. SIBUR held a design session on sustainable development in the petrochemical industry. At the event, BASF shared details on its new sustainability strategy and its integration into the company's overall strategy. The participants were also presented with the company's methods of environmental impact assessment and approach to the circular economy, which embraces opportunities for chemical recycling of plastics, such as the ChemCycling project. With chemical recycling, fossil resources for chemical production can be replaced with recycled material from plastic waste.

Ethylene and propylene are feedstocks for producing polyethylene (PE) and polypropylene (PP).

According to MRC's ScanPlast report, Russia's estimated PE consumption totalled 1,589,580 tonnes in the first nine months of 2019, up by 7% year on year. Shipments of all PE grades increased. The estimated PP consumption in the Russian market was 976,790 tonnes in January-September 2019, up by 4% year on year. Shipments of PP block copolymer and homopolymer PP increased.

BASF is the leading chemical company. It produces a wide range of chemicals, for example solvents, amines, resins, glues, electronic-grade chemicals, industrial gases, basic petrochemicals and inorganic chemicals. The most important customers for this segment are the pharmaceutical, construction, textile and automotive industries.
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Plastic Turned Parts (PTP) has reported a doubling in company turnover since 2015. The revenue increase is related to on-going investment in new manufacturing equipment, said PRW.

Over this same period, the Hertfordshire-based company has invested more than ?750,000 in six new CNC turning machines. Five of the machines were delivered by Citizen Machinery. Four of these featured Cincom sliding head lathes, with the fifth using a Miyano fixed-head model.

The additions mean there are now nine lathes operating at the site. The company also uses three turn-mill centres for machining bar and billets between 65 and 150mm in diameter. A Haas CNC mill, installed in 2005, is used for second-work operations and also destructive testing.

All equipment, apart from two Citizen lathes, are fitted with bar magazines from Italian manufacturer Iemca. Commenting on the new equipment, PTP MD and owner Jonathan Newis, said: "To enable us to achieve sustained business growth, we only use the best production equipment on the market. That applies to everything in use on the shopfloor, including the barfeeds, which is why there are seven Iemcas in use here.

Newis singled out the Iemca Boss 338-HD Superfast, feeding a 20mm capacity slider for particular praise. He noted that turning flexible plastic bar is an “esoteric art”, as unlike metal bars, thinner stock can sag under its own weight, both within the magazine and in the space between it and the lathe.

The Italian manufacturer customised the machine to use solid panels instead of standard cross struts for supporting the plastic bars along the length of the magazine to eliminate this issue.

Bespoke clamping blocks are used to ensure smaller-diameter bars remain horizontal within the gap between the barfeed and entry into the turning centre.

MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Oil market analysts must make sense of a bewildering array of statistics about production, consumption and inventories, compiled and published with varying definitions and degrees of accuracy and timeliness, reported Reuters.

The challenge is to form an accurate and nuanced picture of the whole market capable of generating useful forecasts, without becoming lost in the insignificant details.

The World Bank identifies around 200 economies in the world, but on the consumption side, at least, only a handful are individually important for market analysis.

The oil market is best thought of as a complex adaptive system (“Persistence of instability in the oil market”, Reuters, Sept. 15, 2016).

Complex systems are "large networks of components with no central control and simple rules of operation that give rise to complex collective behavior".

From the demand side of the oil market, however, the only countries worth tracking individually are those with consumption large enough to affect the market as a whole and changing fast enough to alter equilibrium.

Just ten countries account for well over half of global oil consumption and three-quarters of the incremental growth over the last decade, and these are the ones it is crucial to follow closely.

Other countries are too small to have an individual impact, though they can make a difference in groups when consumption changes collectively in response to common global influences such as price spikes and recession.

The most important influence on global oil consumption growth comes from China and India, which are large and fast-growing consumers.

China’s oil consumption hit 13.5 million barrels per day (bpd) in 2018 and had grown by an average of 5.5% per year over the previous decade, according to data from BP.

India’s oil consumption hit 5.1 million bpd in 2018 and had increased by an average of 5.1% over the previous ten years.

China and India accounted for 19% of all oil consumption worldwide last year and 58% of all consumption growth over the last decade.

The two Asian giants play an increasingly dominant role in consumption analysis and stand in a category of their own.

The United States is next in importance, with consumption of 20.5 million bpd, roughly 50% higher than China and 300% higher than India, but with growth of just 0.5% per year in 2008-2018.

The United States accounts for roughly 20% of global consumption, slightly larger than China and India combined, but its slow rate of growth means it has a much less decisive impact on price formation.

Beyond the United States, come Saudi Arabia, Brazil, South Korea and possibly Russia, all medium-sized oil consumers which exhibited fast growth in 2008-2018.

Finally, Japan and Germany, medium-sized oil consumers which exhibited relatively rapid rates of declining oil use over the last decade.

Canada is a similar-sized oil consumer but exhibited only very slow growth in 2008-2018, making it relatively unimportant analytically.

These ten countries accounted for 60% of all global consumption in 2018 and 76% of all consumption growth in 2008-2018.

Tracking global oil consumption is mostly about following closely what is happening in these key consuming countries.

The remaining 190 economies consumed 40% of global oil but accounted for less than a quarter of the decade growth.

These economies are too small to have a significant influence on oil consumption and prices individually, though they can have important effects in aggregate.

Oil price spikes and slumps have a synchronized and significant impact on consumption on these other economies, big enough to help move the market.

Global and regional business cycles also tend to have a common impact on consumption in these economies that can be significant in aggregate.

And commodity price cycles (including both oil and non-oil commodities) can have a significant common impact on commodity-dependent exporting countries that shows up in their collective oil consumption.

In most cases, the influences on the smaller consuming economies from oil prices, the macroeconomic cycle and the commodity cycle are the same as for the major consuming economies.

The top ten oil consumers include a fairly representative sample of advanced economies (United States, Japan, Germany, Canada and South Korea) and emerging markets (China, India, Brazil, Russia and Saudi Arabia).

The top ten also include a representative mix of oil producers (United States, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Canada and Brazil) as well as consumers (China, India, Japan, Germany and South Korea).

And there is a good geographic mix including North America (United States and Canada), Latin America (Brazil), Europe (Germany and Russia), the Middle East (Saudi Arabia) and Asia (China, India, Japan and South Korea).

Trends in the top ten oil consumers therefore provide a useful proxy for the broader oil market – making the task of tracking worldwide consumption growth much simpler and easier.
MRC