Axalta announced CEO transition

Axalta Coating Systems Ltd. AXTA (Axalta), a leading global coatings company, today announced that Robert Bryant will step down as President and Chief Executive Officer to pursue other opportunities, effective August 31, 2022, said the company.

He will also step down as a member of the Board of Directors at such time. Rakesh Sachdev, an independent director and former Chief Executive Officer of Platform Specialty Products Corporation (now renamed Element Solutions Inc.) and Sigma-Aldrich Corporation, will assume the role of interim Chief Executive Officer at that time. The Board has initiated a comprehensive search process to identify a new CEO.

Bill Cook, Axalta's Board Chair, said, On behalf of the Board of Directors, I would like to thank Robert for his leadership and dedication to Axalta. Robert joined the company as CFO in 2013 when it was first carved out of DuPont and played a key role in Axalta's successful IPO and listing on the NYSE in 2014.

Since being appointed President, CEO and Director in 2018, Robert has built a strong leadership team and spearheaded our transition to a business-centric operational model that has allowed us to be more customer focused, while also advancing our innovation and human capital programs. I'd like to extend a special thanks for his leadership during the unprecedented challenges we've faced over the past few years related to the COVID-19 pandemic and global supply chain issues. We wish Robert continued success in his next endeavors.

We remind, Axalta, a leading global supplier of liquid and powder coatings, broke ground for construction of a state-of-the-art coatings facility in Jilin City, Jilin Province, North China. The 46,000-square-meter new plant will produce mobility coatings to support growing customer demand in China for light vehicles, commercial vehicles, and automotive plastic components. "Our new plant in Jilin is another building block supporting our ambitious growth strategy for our mobility business in China," said Nicolas Franc de Ferriere, Vice President, Mobility, Asia Pacific at Axalta.
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Azelis, a leading innovation service provider in the specialty chemicals and food ingredients industry, is pleased to announce a new distribution agreement with Green Mountain Biotech, a leading provider of high-quality active botanical blends for the personal care and cosmetic industries, said the company.

Effective immediately, Azelis will distribute Green Mountain Biotech’s portfolio of active plant extracts for Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.

Green Mountain Biotech’s range of natural actives and extracts for the personal care market are the result of years of rigorous scientific research and clinical testing. Green Mountain Biotech has developed high-quality, sustainable herbal formulas, that both alleviate dermatological symptoms and improve overall skin health. The addition of Green Mountain Biotech’s complete portfolio of innovative and sustainable products reinforces Azelis’ personal care offering for Southeast Asia.

Roni Kramer, Green Mountain Biotech Founder & CEO, says: "Green Mountain Biotech has partnered with Azelis to expand its reach in the Southeast Asia region, to provide consumers with high-quality, natural and sustainable solutions that are in rising demand. Azelis’ commitment to growth and dedicated organization for personal care, coupled with their technical and market expertise and sustainability ambitions, proved crucial for our decision to entrust Azelis with the distribution of our specialty portfolio."

Jacqueline Hoe, Azelis Asia Pacific Market Segment Director Personal Care, comments: "This new partnership will allow us to offer supplementary innovative and sustainable solutions for the personal care industry across Southeast Asia. Green Mountain Biotech’s portfolio complements our personal care offering in the region, with the addition of their high-quality, proprietary, botanical blends and advanced ingredients that are also sustainably sourced, a great combination that ensures we continue to offer the best solutions to our customers."

As per MRC, Azelis, a leading global innovation service provider in the specialty chemicals and food ingredients industry, announces that it has reached an agreement to acquire 100% of the shares of Chemical Solutions Sdn Bhd (“ChemSol”), one of the leading distributors of raw materials in the Personal Care, Cosmetics and Household markets in Malaysia.
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Chevron Phillips was utilizing the safety flare system at its Baytown, Texas, chemical plant following a power interruption, according to a source familiar with plant operations, said Reuters.

Thick black smoke was seen throughout the morning at the plant, located on the east side of the Houston metro area, according to a Reuters witness.

The smoke had started to dissipate by around noon local time, the witness said. The company did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Safety flares are used when a refinery or chemical plant experiences an upset or outage to burn off hydrocarbons that cannot be processed normally.

As per MRC, QatarEnergy and Chevron Phillips Chemical Company (CPChem) have awarded the early site works contract for the Ras Laffan Petrochemical Project (RLPP) to Consolidated Contractors Company (CCC). The contract award marks the commencement of execution of the RLPP. CCC has secured a lump-sum contract to prepare the site for the new facility within Ras Laffan Industrial City. Early works on the project will begin in June, at the conclusion of which the EPC contract for the project is expected to be awarded.
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Vietnam's Binh Son Refining and Petrochemical recorded net profit of USD424 mln in the second quarter, up by nearly six times from a year earlier, said Reuters.

Binh Son, which owns a 130,000-bpd refinery in central Vietnam, said in a statement the recent surge in domestic fuel prices was behind its profit jump. It also said it had been operating above capacity this year to meet domestic fuel demand amid a an output cut in Vietnam's other refinery.

As per MRC, Vietnam's Binh Son Refining and Petrochemical will this year roll out a USD1.2 B plan to upgrade and expand its Dung Quat refinery, raising its processing capacity to 7.6 MMt of crude oil a year from 6.5 MMt. The upgrade and expansion work is scheduled to be completed by the end of 2025, the company said in a statement, adding that 60% of the funds needed for the plan will come from loans. The refinery in Vietnam's central province of Quang Ngai plans to raise the proportion of imported crude oil it processes to 35%-46% this year from 21.4% last year, it said. It targets output 6.5 MMt this year, unchanged from last year.

We remind that NSRP resumed operations at its new polypropylene (PP) plant in Vietnam on 17 October, 2021, after an unscheduled maintenance. The 400,000 mt year of PP plant was unexpectedly shut on 7 October, 2021, due to a technical glitch.

According to MRC's ScanPlast report, PP shipments to the Russian market totalled 1,494.280 tonnes, up by 21% year on year. Deliveries of homopolymer PP and PP block copolymers increased, whereas shipments of PP random copolymers decreased significantly.

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The Biden administration said it will sell an additional 20 MM barrels of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve as part of a previous plan to tap the facility to calm oil prices boosted by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and as demand recovers from the pandemic, said Reuters.

The administration said in late March it would release a record 1 MM barrels of per day of oil for six months from the SPR, held in hollowed-out salt caverns on the coasts of Louisiana and Texas. The United States has already sold 125 MM barrels from the reserve with nearly 70 MM barrels already delivered to purchasers, a senior administration official told reporters.

The SPR releases have been a "supply lifeline" to oil and refining companies as the industry continues to get oil production back online after declines during the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic, the official said. The U.S. Energy Information Administration, the statistics arm of the Energy Department, said this month that U.S. oil output will rise to more than 11.9 MMbpd in 2022 and to nearly 12.8 MMbpd in 2023, from about 11.2 MMbpd in 2021. That compares with a record near 12.3 million bpd in 2019.

The United States will take bids in autumn to begin the process of buying back 60 million barrels of crude for reserve, a first step in replenishing the stockpile after the 180 MM barrel release, the Department of Energy said in May. The department will soon propose a rule to help put oil back into the SPR, where levels have sunk to 475.5 MM barrels, the lowest since June 1985, by allowing it to enter forward contracts to purchase oil in future years at fixed, preset prices.

"What it means in practice is that producers would have more certainty about future demand for their product, and that would encourage investment in production today," a senior U.S. official told reporters. Oil purchases to replenish the SPR will not be competing with demand for oil in the near term as they will likely take place after fiscal year 2023, an official told reporters.

As per MRC, the recovery in Russian oil production has continued this month as higher domestic demand offset a slight drop in exports to key markets. The nation’s producers pumped 10.78 million barrels a day on average from July 1 to 17, according to data from the Energy Ministry’s CDU-TEK unit that was seen by Bloomberg. That’s 0.6% above the June level, according to calculations based on the data, indicating that the pace of the country’s output recovery has slowed.
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