Celanese sells USD7.5 bn of bonds to finance DuPont unit deal

Celanese Corporation, a global chemical and specialty materials company, today priced USD7.5 billion in permanent financing for the acquisition of a majority of DuPont’s Mobility & Materials business (the “acquisition”), said the company.

The Company announced that its subsidiary, Celanese US Holdings LLC (the “Company”), has priced a registered offering (the “Offering”) of USD7.5 billion aggregate principal amount of notes of various maturities with interest rates ranging from 5.91% to 6.38% (the “Notes”). The Notes will be guaranteed on a senior unsecured basis by the Company and certain Celanese domestic subsidiaries, similar to prior issuances. The Offering is expected to close on or about July 14, 2022.

The Company simultaneously entered into a cross-currency swap to effectively convert USD2.5 billion of the US dollar denominated Notes into a euro-denominated borrowing at prevailing euro interest rates. The effective net borrowing rate to the Company will be approximately 5.6%, inclusive of the yield on the Notes and the beneficial impact of the currency swap.

"We are pleased to have secured a significant portion of the permanent financing for the M&M acquisition in this first window of opportunity,” said Scott Richardson, executive vice president and chief financial officer. “We were purposeful in securing an amount of debt that maintained competitive rates considering current debt market conditions. The cross-currency swap we simultaneously entered will help to align our currency mix with our anticipated global earnings while reducing our total borrowing cost. Looking to the future, we expect to have multiple windows and potential funding sources to secure the remaining financing, with flexibility depending on market conditions and the eventual timing to close the acquisition."

As MRC reported earlier, in H2, 2021, Celanese Corporation announced a force majeure (FM) in China for vinyl acetate monomer (VAM) shipments from its plant Nanjing, China. Celanese temporarily shut down its acetic anhydride and VAM production in Nanjing to comply with requirements of government departments in order to achieve dual energy consumption targets in the Jiangsu Province in 2021. Thus, its VAM plan with the capacity of 300,000 mt/year was shut on 17 September, 2021, and its resumed operations on 9 October, 2021.

Celanese Corporation is a global technology leader in the production of differentiated chemistry solutions and specialty materials used in most major industries and consumer applications. Based in Dallas, Celanese employs approximately 8,500 employees worldwide and had 2021 net sales of USD8.5 billion.
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India’s Gujarat Alkalies & Chemicals Ltd (GACL) expects its total caustic soda capacity to reach more than 850,000 tonnes/year by year end from the current 412,500, said the company.

GACL expects to commission the caustic soda expansion project at its Dahej complex in western Gujarat state by October 2022, the source said. The expansion project will raise GACL’s caustic soda capacity at the site to 432,300 tonnes/year. from 259,050 tonne/year currently. The planned expansion was approved in 2019.

GACL initially expected to begin operations at the brownfield expansion project in the fiscal year ending March 2022. Meanwhile, the company also expects to fully commission a new 266,667 tonne/year caustic soda plant of its joint venture GACL-NALCO Alkalies & Chemicals Ltd (GNAL) by December 2022, the company source said.

The GNAL project at Dahej, is a joint venture project between state-owned firms GACL and National Aluminium Co Ltd (NALCO). In April, GNAL partially commissioned a 70,000 tonnes/year caustic evaporation unit which forms part of the greenfield caustic soda project. Once operational, the two caustic soda projects will help the company cater to domestic demand as well as export markets, the company source said.

As per MRC, Gujarat Alkalies and Chemicals Ltd (GACL) had earlier informed about updates on GACL-NALCO Alkalies & Chemicals Private Limited (GNAL), a Joint Venture Company between GACL and National Aluminium Company Limited (NALCO) formed to set up 800 TPD Caustic Soda Plant along with 130 MW Captive Power Plant at Dahej.
GNAL is a material subsidiary of the company.

Gujarat Alkalies and Chemicals Limited (GACL), incorporated in Mar 1973, is a state-owned chemical manufacturing unit. GACL is one of the largest producers of Caustic Soda in India, with a production capacity of over 1400 TPD at their two complexes eg. Dahej and Vadodara. GACL has also its subsidiary company viz. GACL-NALCO Alkalies and Chemicals Pvt. Ltd. (GNAL) putting up an 800 TPD Caustic Soda Plant together with 130 MW Thermal Power Plant (coal-based) at Dahej.
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Air Products, the world's largest hydrogen producer, and power generator VPI, are pleased to announce the signing of a joint development agreement to drive forward the "Humber Hydrogen Hub" or "H3", which seeks to develop a flagship 800MW low-carbon hydrogen production facility in Immingham, UK, said the company.

The majority of hydrogen produced would be used to decarbonize VPI Immingham's existing power production. The agreement was signed by Air Products Chief Operating Officer Dr. Samir J. Serhan and VPI Chairman Russell Hardy.

As the UK's largest industrial cluster, the Humber has the highest levels of industrial carbon dioxide (CO?) emissions. H3 would produce low-carbon hydrogen at large scale, combining market-leading hydrogen production, carbon capture technology and offshore CO? storage currently under development for the Humber region.

The majority of the low-carbon hydrogen would serve as a substitute fuel for VPI's existing third gas turbine power train. Additional low-carbon hydrogen would also be made available to other industrial users. Combined with deployment of post-combustion capture technology on trains 1 and 2 at VPI Immingham as part of the Humber Zero project, H3 would bring substantial decarbonization to the VPI combined heat and power facilities, saving over two-thirds of the emissions from its Immingham industrial site.

The H3 project looks to capture up to two million tonnes of CO? per annum and contribute to achieving Net Zero in the wider Humber industrial region by 2040.

As per MRC, Air Products and Gunvor Petroleum Rotterdam (GPR), a wholly-owned subsidiary of Gunvor Group (Gunvor), have signed a joint development agreement for an import terminal in Rotterdam, the companies said.The agreement responds to the accelerating demand for green energy sources to meet climate objectives and the need to diversify energy sources, with the import terminal expected to provide green hydrogen to the Netherlands in 2026, Air Products said.
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Shiseido Company, Limited (Shiseido), SEKISUI CHEMICAL CO., LTD., and Sumitomo Chemical Co., Ltd. will start a joint initiative to establish a circular economy for plastic cosmetics containers, in which used cosmetics plastic containers are collected, converted to resources and materials without sorting, and recycled back into plastic cosmetics containers, said the company.

Cosmetics containers are made from a wide variety of plastics as their importance is placed on protection of contents, ease of use, and design. Therefore, sorting cosmetic containers for recycling is difficult, posing a significant challenge in recycling them into plastic resources. To solve this issue, Shiseido, SEKISUI CHEMICAL, and Sumitomo Chemical have agreed to work together to build a new system to collect used plastic cosmetics containers and recycle them back into new cosmetics containers, leveraging their respective expertise.

Shiseido will introduce a new scheme to collect plastic cosmetics containers through retail stores and use recycled polyolefin*1 for its cosmetics containers. SEKISUI CHEMICAL will utilize the “BR ethanol technology*2” to convert used plastics into ethanol, a raw material for plastics, by turning combustible waste into gas without sorting, and converting the gas into ethanol using microbes. Meanwhile, Sumitomo Chemical will manufacture ethylene*3 from that ethanol by using a technology for converting renewable ethanol into ethylene, and produce, from the ethylene, polyolefin products with quality equivalent to conventional polyolefin using fossil resources.

The three companies will advance this cross-sectoral alliance, while also calling on related industries and companies to join in the effort, and strive to create a circular economy.

As per MRC, Sumitomo Corporation reported the consolidated financial results of its Media & Digital business unit for FY 2021-2022 (year ended 31 Mar 2022). Media & Digital business unit posted profit of Yen 39.4 bn, a decrease of Yen 4.9 bn compared to profit of Yen 44.3 bn in FY 2020-2021.
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МОСКВА (MRC) -- To realize green energy and green hydrogen objectives and the government’s efforts toward a carbon-neutrality economy, a memorandum of understanding (MoU) was signed between NTPC RE Limited (NTPC REL) and Gujarat Alkalies and Chemicals Limited (GACL) on Wednesday at New Delhi, said the company.

The MoU has been signed by GACL’s Managing Director Harshad R Patel (IAS) and NTPC REL’s Chief Executive Officer Mohit Bhargava. The MoU envisages collaborating in the field of renewable energy, green methanol and green ammonia and mutually exploring the opportunities for the supply of 100 MW RE-RTC (Round The Clock) power and synthesizing 75 TPD Green Methanol and 35 TPD Green Ammonia for captive use for the production of various chemicals by GACL at its Vadodara and Dahej complex in Gujarat.

NTPC Limited, has been at the forefront of renewable energy (RE) capacity development and has been credited for bringing the lowest ever solar tariff in the country. NTPC REL, a 100 percent subsidiary of NTPC was incorporated in October 2020 to take care the RE business of NTPC. This development comes in the backdrop of NTPC announcing its green hydrogen initiatives and plan to build the country’s first pilot projects for synthesizing green methanol, setting up green hydrogen filling station, green hydrogen blending into PNG and green energy storage projects.

This would be the first commercial-scale green ammonia and green methanol project in the country and align with the vision laid out by the PM for Atmanirbhar Bharat.

NTPC is India’s largest Power Utility and its core business is generation with a total installed capacity of 69 GW (including JVs and subsidiaries). As part of increasing its renewable energy portfolio, a fully owned subsidiary has been formed on October 7, 2020, known as “NTPC Renewable Energy Limited” (NTPC REL) which shall take up Renewable Energy Parks and Projects including business in the area of Green Hydrogen, Energy Storage Technologies and Round the Clock RE Power.

As per MRC, Gujarat Alkalies and Chemicals Ltd (GACL) had earlier informed about updates on GACL-NALCO Alkalies & Chemicals Private Limited (GNAL), a Joint Venture Company between GACL and National Aluminium Company Limited (NALCO) formed to set up 800 TPD Caustic Soda Plant along with 130 MW Captive Power Plant at Dahej.
GNAL is a material subsidiary of the company.

Gujarat Alkalies and Chemicals Limited (GACL), incorporated in Mar 1973, is a state-owned chemical manufacturing unit. GACL is one of the largest producers of Caustic Soda in India, with a production capacity of over 1400 TPD at their two complexes eg. Dahej and Vadodara. GACL has also its subsidiary company viz. GACL-NALCO Alkalies and Chemicals Pvt. Ltd. (GNAL) putting up an 800 TPD Caustic Soda Plant together with 130 MW Thermal Power Plant (coal-based) at Dahej.
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