PPG appoints Brad Budde as vice president and chief digital officer

PPG announced the appointment of Brad Budde as vice president and chief digital officer, effective Sept. 6. Reporting directly to Irene Tasi, chief growth officer, Budde will lead the company’s digital strategy and execution to accelerate customer digital engagement with PPG, said the company.

"Brad has a proven track record of developing results-driven digital solutions and customer experiences,” said Irene Tasi, PPG chief growth officer. “As we look to further accelerate our digital offering and achieve increased business growth, his knowledge and expertise will play a key role in driving our strategy forward."

Budde joins PPG from Emerson, a Fortune 500 global technology and software company providing innovative solutions for customers in industrial, commercial and residential markets, where he was vice president, digital customer experience. During his more than 15 years at Emerson, he held roles of increasing responsibility, including leading the company’s digital product development roadmaps across Emerson.com and MyEmerson, digital engineering tools, eCommerce, sales enablement, and digital analytics. Prior to Emerson, Budde served as a business manager for a plastics packaging company and started an entrepreneurial venture that manufactured and marketed reusable produce bags for grocery stores.

Budde earned a master of business administration (MBA) in Entrepreneurship from the University of St. Thomas - Opus College of Business, and a bachelor’s of science degree in mechanical engineering from North Dakota State University.

As per MRC, PPG announced PPG INNOVEL PRO, an enhanced internal spray coating that uses no bisphenol-A (BPA) or bisphenol starting substances and provides more robust application properties for the infinitely recyclable aluminium beverage can. PPG Innovel PRO is a next-generation, high-performance acrylic coating that draws on PPG Innovel's nearly 10 years as the market's most widely used non-BPA internal beverage spray coatings. The company estimates that PPG Innovel coatings have been used on more than 220 bn cans in more than 40 countries to date.
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Sasol Chemicals, a business unit of Sasol Ltd., plans to double its use of green steam from a first of its kind biomass cogeneration facility adjacent to its Brunsbuttel, Germany facility, said the company.

Sasol Chemicals will lease land adjacent to its plant to Hamburger Energiewerke, Hamburg’s municipal utility, which plans to build the facility by the end of 2024. When fully operational in 2025, the plant will supply at least 70,000 megawatt hours of steam to Sasol each year, enabling the company to reduce its CO2 emissions from the plant by approximately 13,000 metric tons annually. In addition to green steam, the plant will produce more than 90,000 megawatt hours of sustainable electricity annually.

"This is another important step towards meeting our ambitious long-term sustainability objectives,” said Jens Straatmann, Senior Vice President, Eurasia Chemicals. "Increasing the use of green steam is a key enabler of further reducing our greenhouse gas emissions and will get us closer to our goal of reducing our scope 1 and scope 2 emissions by 30 percent by 2030."

The facility will be the first large–scale power generation plant to operate almost exclusively with well-pressed or dried fermentation residues. That feedstock will be sourced from plants that are certified under Germany’s Renewable Energy Sources Act. The plant will benefit local agriculture because much of this material is surplus that is currently going to waste; now, it will become the heat source for the chemical building blocks of products used in personal care, cleaning and industrial applications.

Since 2014 the Brunsbuttel facility has used green steam from another nearby biomass facility. The two facilities combined will be able to supply half of the plant’s steam consumption.

Sasol’s Brunsbuttel facility, its largest in Germany, is located 80 kilometres (50 miles) northwest of Hamburg near the Kiel Canal and produces a broad range of organic and inorganic products. The site's organic products are used in a range of daily applications including detergents and cleaning agents, cosmetics, and pharmaceuticals, as well as in various technical applications. The site’s inorganic products are key components in catalysts, high-performance abrasives, and polymer additives.

As per MRC, Sasol Chemicals will lease land adjacent to its plant to Hamburger Energiewerke, Hamburg’s municipal utility, which plans to build the facility by the end of 2024. When fully operational in 2025, the plant will supply at least 70,000 megawatt hours of steam to Sasol each year, enabling the company to reduce its CO2 emissions from the plant by approximately 13,000 metric tons annually. In addition to green steam, the plant will produce more than 90,000 megawatt hours of sustainable electricity annually.
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Covestro has now announced plans to set up its first dedicated line for the mechanical recycling (MCR) of polycarbonates at its integrated site in Shanghai, said the company.

The new MCR line will address the growing demand for more sustainable solutions, in particular with Post-Consumer-Recycled (PCR) products, to be used primarily for the compounding step in the manufacture of electrical and electronic products, automotive applications, and consumer goods.

The line, which represents an investment of more than EUR 27 million, will be capable of delivering more than 25,000 tons of high-quality polycarbonates and blends containing mechanically recycled content annually when it is planned to be commissioned in 2023. Overall, the company aims to be capable to deliver more than 60,000 tons of polycarbonates with recycled content in Asia Pacific per year until 2026.

"The MCR production line is another exciting step we have taken to fulfill our commitment toward a circular economy and achieve our goal to become operational climate neutral by 2035," said Sucheta Govil, Chief Commercial Officer of Covestro. "Recycling plastic waste is absolutely essential to the circular economy, and addresses one of the major global challenges we face together as a society. We will continue to invest in expanding and improving our capacity for recycled plastics, and leading the industry to create materials with higher recycled content."

"To meet the rapid growth in demand for more sustainable and circular solutions from our downstream customers, we will continue to invest in expanding our capabilities," said Lily Wang, Head of Covestro’s Engineering Plastics segment, at the groundbreaking event. "This MCR production line is the latest example of our efforts in this regard and signals our commitment to driving the transition to more sustainable products in this region, especially in China."

Covestro will also be repurposing an existing compounding line at its Map Ta Phut site in Thailand to a plant for mechanical recycling. The conversion of the plant is scheduled to be accomplished by the end of 2022 and continue to pave the way and meet market demand for polycarbonates from post-consumer recycled (PCR) content across multiple industries in the ASEAN region. Based on the current forecast, the unit will supply up to 10 percent PCR based product of its annual production volume by 2030.

As per MRC, Covestro declared force majeure on 10 August on several products due to a chlorine leak according to a company source. According to the letter, a partial resumption of chlorine supplies is anticipated on 31 August and a full resumption of chlorine supply is expected on 30 November. The end date is unknown for resumption of operations for downstream production plants beyond 31 August according to the same letter.
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Polyplastics Group will highlight its expanded product portfolio at the upcoming K 2022 exhibition (Hall 7A/B02) which runs Oct. 19-26 in Dusseldorf, Germany, said the company.

With full acquisition by Daicel in 2020, Polyplastics has expanded its options for growth and geographical market coverage. The company has expanded LCP sales to EMEA and the Americas. In addition, Polyplastic acquired shares in Daicel-Evonik (currently Polyplastics-Evonik) from Daicel in late 2021. As a result, the company, which provides high-performance polymers polyamide (PA) 12 and PEEK in Asia, has newly joined the Polyplastics Group. In Europe, the company has announced that its Technical Solutions Center in Raunheim, Germany officially opened in Apr 2022. The one-stop shop serves the technical support needs of its growing customer base in Europe and reaffirms continued commitment to the market in Europe.

At K show, the company will discuss the latest developments in its broadened product lines which address the demanding end-use requirements in the medical, electrical/electronics, automotive industries and environmental/sustainable expectations. One of the latest developments in relation to sustainability is the introduction of PLASTRON® LFT resin which is made of specially formulated regenerated cellulose fibers, providing weight reduction plus mechanical strength, enabling manufacturers to reduce their carbon footprint and meet today’s sustainability demands.

Expanded global supply capability which includes planned construction of a new POM, LCP and COC manufacturing plant will be also highlighted.

As per MRC, Polyplastics Co., Ltd. has decided to construct the new polymerization plant with the production capacity of 5,000 tonnes per year at Polyplastics Taiwan Co., Ltd. As a highly heat-resistant super engineering plastic, LCP is used in a wide range of industrial fields, mainly electronic components used in information and communication equipment such as personal computers and smartphones, and its market has continued to expand at a high growth rate. In recent years, the market demand has increased along with the increase in investment for 5G equipment, and it is expected that the applications of LCP will continue to expand with the full-scale support for 5G millimeter waves.
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Johnson Matthey, (JM), a global leader in sustainable technologies, has again been included in the FTSE4Good Index series, recognising strong Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) practices, said company.

To qualify each year, JM is independently assessed according to theFTSE4Good Index criteria. This year JM’s score has increased to 4.1 from 3.9. This places us in the top three percent within the chemicals sector.

The FTSE4Good Index Series, created by the global index provider FTSE Russell, is designed to measure the performance of companies demonstrating good sustainability practices. The indices are used by a wide variety of market participants to create and assess responsible investment funds and other products, and JM first qualified in 2003.

Julia Rowe, Group Sustainability Director, said: “I’m delighted that FTSE4Good continue to recognise JM as a sustainable leader in the chemical sector, and it’s great we have improved our score once again this year.

"Sustainability is an integral part of JM as an organisation and is embedded into our strategy. Our sustainability goals and targets provide a clear vision for how we will continue to increase our positive impact on the world, from the use of our products and services to our own operations and how we look after our people and supply chains. Our goals are ambitious, but we look forward to making further progress next year."

As per MRC, Johnson Matthey (JM) has announced that it is collaborating with ClimeCo, a global climate solutions company, to accelerate the deployment of enhanced carbon capture solutions for industry. Under a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU), the two companies will help syngas producers, initially in hydrogen and methanol, to build the business case for reducing CO2 emissions from existing processes by up to 95%.
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