Covestro CFO to leave in August 2023

Covestro has accepted a request from CFO Thomas Toepfer for early termination of his contract, said the company.

Toepfer will leave the company as of 31 August 2023 to join European aircraft manufacturer Airbus as CFO, ahead of his current contract which is due to expire on 31 March 2026.

Covestro’s Supervisory Board has started its search for a successor and will make an announcement in due course. Toepfer will continue in his role as CFO and Labour Director until he leaves the company.

Toepfer has been a member of Covestro’s management board since April 2018 as CFO and is responsible for Accounting, Controlling, and Finance. He has additionally held the position of Labour Director since 2019.

We remind, Covestro has successfully started up a new world-scale facility for the production of chlorine in Tarragona, Spain. It is the first world-scale production plant for chlorine based upon the highly innovative and energy efficient ODC (oxygen depolarized cathode) technology invented by Covestro and its partners.

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Huntsman Corporation announced on Wednesday that it has secured all regulatory approvals required to complete the sale of its textile effects division to Archroma, a portfolio company of SK Capital Partners, said the company.

Both parties expect the transaction to close 28 February. The agreed purchase price was $593m in cash plus assumed pension liabilities, and Huntsman expects the net after tax cash proceeds to be approximately $540m before customary post-closing adjustments.

"Our teams have been working diligently since we signed the purchase agreement last August to get this deal to closing and, when we secured approval from the Indian competition law authority last week, we quickly put the final steps in place to complete the transaction on 28 February," Peter Huntsman, chairman, president, and CEO, said.

We remind, Huntsman Corporation announced the start of commercial operation of a new methylene diphenyl diisocyanate (MDI) splitter at its Geismar site in Louisiana. The USD180 million splitter gives Huntsman the ability to produce more high value, differentiated grades from the crude MDI manufactured at the plant, thereby enabling growth in key customer applications.

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North American chemical railcar traffic fell for a 21st straight week, with loadings for the week ended 11 February down 2.6% year on year to 46,254, led by a 5.8% decline in the US, according to the latest freight rail data by the Association of American Railroads (AAR).

For the first six weeks of 2023 ended 11 February, North American chemical rail traffic was down 5.2% year on year to 264,053 railcar loadings, with US traffic down by 9.1%, to 187,166 loadings.

In the US, chemical railcar loadings represent about 20% of chemical transportation by tonnage, with trucks, barges and pipelines carrying the rest. In Canada, chemical producers rely on rail to ship more than 70% of their products, with some exclusively using rail.

We remind, North American chemical railcar traffic fell for a 20th straight week, with loadings for the week ended 4 February down 2.0% year on year to 45,381, led by a 3.5% decline in the US. For the first five weeks of 2023 ended 4 February, North American chemical rail traffic was down 5.6% year on year to 218,205 railcar loadings, with US traffic down by 9.8% or 154,499 loadings.

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PetroChina completed trial runs at a 1.2 million tonne-per-year ethylene facility in its newly launched refinery complex in south China on Sunday, China Daily reported.

PetroChina Guangdong PC announced that the ethylene plant, a 10-million-ton refining and chemical integration project, has successfully produced on-spec products and entered the stage of comprehensive trial production on Feb 12. PetroChina Guangdong Petrochemical Refining and Chemical Integration Project, located in Jieyang, Guangdong Province, covers an area of 920 hectares, with crude oil refining production capacity of 20 million mt/year aromatics capacity 2.6 million tons/year and ethylene capacity 1.2 million tons/year.

The successful trial production of ethylene plant ensures the stable output of naphtha LPG products in the upstream refinery unit, and provides stable feedstock for downstream polyethylene plant, so as to ensure the overall stable operation of refining and chemical integration.

The 400kt/year HDPE plant and 800kt/year HDPE/LLDPE plant of PetroChina Guangdong PC plan to put into production in early 2023.

We remind, LyondellBasell announced that their leading high-pressure Lupotech process technology has been licensed to PetroChina Jilin Petrochemical Company in Jilin City, Jilin Province, P.R. of China. The license will provide for two production trains: a 100 kiloton per year (KTA) Autoclave and a 300 KTA Tubular line for low-density Polyethylene (LDPE) with ethylene Vinyl Acetate Copolymer (EVA). In addition, an additional 400 KTA Hostalen “Advanced Cascade Process” (ACP) line to produce high-density Polyethylene (HDPE) will be built at the same time.

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India’s competition authority granted merger clearance for the planned joint venture for high-performance engineering materials by Advent International and specialty chemicals company LANXESS, said the company.

Other relevant competition authorities approved the transaction in the course of last year and lately the EU Commission granted clearance on January 9, 2023. The transaction is therefore ready for closing which is now planned to take place no later than the beginning of April 2023.

We remind, On May 31, 2022, Advent and LANXESS announced the envisaged establishment of an Advent controlled, leading global engineering materials joint venture company with sales of around EUR 3 billion, combining the DSM Engineering Materials business with LANXESS’ High Performance Materials business.

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