Solvay to sell its stake in RusVinyl

Solvay has agreed on the final terms of sale of its 50% stake in the RusVinyl joint venture with SIBUR, said the Belgian specialty firm.

The transaction is expected to take place towards the end of the first quarter and will represent a capital loss of around EUR175m to Solvay on completion of the sale.

The write down mainly reflects the crystallisation of historic currency translation balances. The agreement was based on a purchase price for Solvay’s 50% stake of around EUR430m.

With this sale, Solvay will have fully left the global polyvinyl chloride (PVC) market, in line with its portfolio transformation strategy.

We remind, Solvay is planning to commission a new biomass boiler for its Aroma Performance plant in Saint-Fons, France. The boiler will reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 75,000 tonnes/year compared to 2018 levels, which will become operational by the end of 2025, with the aim of making the site carbon neutral by 2026.

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Indorama Ventures Public Company Limited (IVL), a global sustainable chemical producer, outlined its business strategy at its 2023 Capital Markets Day in Bangkok, including enhancing competitiveness and applying a disciplined and sustainable approach to new opportunities as demand for the company’s products continues to grow globally, said the company.

Since 2019 - a three-year period that included unprecedented pandemic-related disruptions - Indorama Ventures’ revenue grew 65% to a record USD18.7 billion in FY2022, while EBITDA rose 160% to $2.4 billion. The company forecast continued high demand for its diversified, global portfolio of products - more than 70% of which are used in daily consumer necessities that are resistant to economic downturns, including in packaging, clothes, tires, baby diapers, and chemicals used in shampoos.

Mr. Aloke Lohia, Indorama Ventures Group CEO, said “The company is developing and empowering the next generation of leaders with a ‘growth mindset’ as a cornerstone of a program to enhance competitiveness and create value through disciplined and sustainable growth."

“We are, and always will be a growth company, and we are embedding this entrepreneurial mindset into the next generation of leaders who can build agile, fast, precise and innovative businesses that can deliver value in an increasingly volatile world,” Mr Lohia said.

To remain competitive, the company is constantly reviewing its diverse, global portfolio of integrated businesses to maximize use of employed capital and maintain management’s historical focus on managing costs. It is also employing new digital toolsets, such as the global rollout of SAP S/4HANA to optimize productivity and enable more agile decision-making to realize full business potential.

Mr DK Agarwal, Deputy Group CEO, said: “Indorama Ventures has undisputed leadership positions in many of our end markets, with enormous scope to expand organically and inorganically. These transformational initiatives are empowering our managers to quickly capture opportunities created by the volatile environment to grow our businesses."

Indorama Ventures has a disciplined strategy to capitalize on its integrated platform of growth businesses through organic growth and new acquisitions that deliver on strict performance criteria. These metrics include an enhanced core EBITDA margin, a 15% return on employed capital, contribution to earnings quality, and allowing the company to maintain balance sheet discipline. Since 2020, the company has expanded in substantial new growth areas, including by developing its newest Integrated Oxides and Derivatives (IOD) segment through acquisitions such as Oxiteno in 2021 and Huntsman assets in 2020.

We remind, Indorama Ventures, which recently launched its first recycled polyethylene terephthalate (R-PET) plant in the Philippines in a joint venture (JV) with Coca-Cola Beverages Philippines (CCBPI), expects persistent challenges in availing themselves of sufficient feedstock.

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Solvay is planning to commission a new biomass boiler for its Aroma Performance plant in Saint-Fons, France, said the company.

The boiler will reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 75,000 tonnes/year compared to 2018 levels, which will become operational by the end of 2025, with the aim of making the site carbon neutral by 2026.

Solvay has entered into a long-term partnership with EDF Group subsidiary Dalkia to commission and operate the boiler, which will run on locally sourced wood waste from building demolition, and waste furniture as fuel to produce steam.

This project is in line with Solvay’s sustainability target to become carbon neutral by 2040.

“The Group is proud to be establishing a new benchmark for vanillin producers worldwide, which, when combined with our Natural Vanillin, will allow us to offer a unique value proposition to customers and consumers,” said Solvay Aroma Performance business president An Nuyttens.

We remind, Solvay in advanced negotiations to divest its stake in Rusvinyl. The company confirms it is in advanced negotiations to divest its stake in Rusvinyl, an independent 50/50 joint venture in Russia, to its joint venture partner, Sibur. In addition to the recently obtained preliminary clearance from Russian governmental authorities, the potential transaction is still subject to several other regulatory approvals. Solvay will keep the market informed if and when appropriate, in accordance with applicable law.

Solvay is a science company whose technologies bring benefits to many aspects of daily life. With more than 21,000 employees in 63 countries, Solvay bonds people, ideas and elements to reinvent progress.

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Long Son Petrochemicals, a unit of Thailand's SCG Chemicals, will start commercial production at its petrochemical complex in southern Vietnam by mid-2023, said Hydrocarbonprocessing.

The USD5-billion facility in Ba Ria Vung Tau province will produce 1.4 MMtpy of plastic resins, it said in an emailed statement.

Its annual output will include 500,000 tpy of high-density polyethylene, 500,000 tpy of linear low density polyethylene and 400,000 tpy of polypropylene, it said.

The complex's raw materials, naphtha and propane, will be imported mostly from the Middle East, the company said.

We remind, Vietnam's largest refinery, Nghi Son, will be shut down for 55 days starting August 25 for major maintenance. The 200,000-barrel-per-day refinery will process 7.96 MMt of crude oil this year, the ministry said in a statement. This will be the first major maintenance at the refinery, which started commercial production in May, 2018. The refinery supplies more than a third of Vietnam's needs for refined fuels.

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BP announced on 28 February that the company was set to launch a renewable hydrogen cluster in the Valencia region, HyVal, at its Castellon refinery where biofuel production would increase, said the company.

BP is set to develop 2GW of electrolyser capacity at Castellon, which is forecast to be completed by 2030. Furthermore, BP said in a press release that biofuel production at the Castellon refinery would triple to 650,000 tonnes/year by the end of the decade with the hydrogen produced via electrolysis replacing its unabated hydrogen production currently located at the site.

The renewable hydrogen produced would be used as a feedstock in the biofuel production process, specifically for the production of sustainable aviation fuel (SAF), in addition to being used close to the site by the ceramic industry and the chemicals industry. In total, BP is set to invest EUR2 billion into the project.

The first phase will see at least 200MW of capacity electrolysis plant being installed at Castellon by 2027, expected to produce up to 31,200 tonnes/year of renewable hydrogen. The second phase will see capacity rise to as much as 2GW by 2030, with the electricity set to come from renewable generation assets (wind and solar) located near the site.

Spain has ambitions of being a net exporter of renewable hydrogen in the coming years, and the BP announcement follows on from several others surrounding investment in the country so far in 2023. Cepsa in February signed a deal with Fertiberia to boost renewable hydrogen production in Huelva as well as signing a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with ACE Terminal for the export of renewable ammonia from 2027, in addition to the Spanish and Dutch governments agreeing to cooperate more in the field of renewable hydrogen and hydrogen corridors.

The H2Med pipeline is set to move as much as 2 million tonnes/year of renewable hydrogen between Portugal, Spain, France, and Germany and is expected to become operational in 2030. In the country's hydrogen strategy, Spain is aiming for at least 4GW of electrolyser capacity by 2030 in addition to 25% of hydrogen consumption in industry to be renewable by 2030 as both a raw material and as an energy source.

Data from ICIS Power Horizon Forecast showed that hydrogen demand in Spain was forecast to increase from 18TWh in 2023 to 25TWh by 2030 against a production capacity of 23TWh, of which 16TWh is expected to be electrolyser capacity.

We remind, British energy company BP said it would invest nearly USD2 billion to develop a hydrogen hub in the Valencia region of Spain using its Castellon refinery as a foundation. BP unveiled plans to build up its electrolysis capacity at Castellon to produce so-called green hydrogen. Hydrogen production is described using a color spectrum and the most common form in use today is grey hydrogen, which splits methane (CH4) into its elemental components of carbon and hydrogen.

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