AkzoNobel completes capacity expansion at Vietnam multi-site

A major investment project has been completed at AkzoNobel’s production plant in Bac Ninh province near Hanoi in Vietnam, which will help to strengthen the company’s position in Asia and sharpen its focus on more sustainable manufacturing, said the company.

Five new powder coating lines have been added at the multi-site, along with a line for producing water-based products for the consumer electronics market (IT, wireless and home appliances). The total investment amounts to €18.5 million.

“The cutting-edge powder coating lines we’ve installed will help us to grow with our customers, serve them faster and pave the way for a more sustainable future,” says Jeff Jirak, Managing Director of AkzoNobel’s Powder Coatings business.

“Increasing capacity at the site will enable us to focus on supporting volume growth in the northern part of the country, while our Dong Nai facility covers the southern part of Vietnam. It means we can now focus on streamlining our manufacturing processes to meet the diverse needs of the Vietnam market.”

The work included building a fully automated warehouse for the company’s consumer electronics activities, along with installing advanced equipment and technology to deliver higher productivity rates and efficiency gains. This will contribute to AkzoNobel’s ambition to halve its own carbon emissions by 2030. The installation of a new line for water-based consumer electronics products will also help to lower emissions across the value chain.

“We can now offer the latest water-based technology to our Vietnam-based multinational customers, including key Asian consumer electronic brands,” explains Maximilien Schreder, Global Director of AkzoNobel’s Consumer Electronics business. “This represents another important step forward in terms of helping to reduce the overall carbon footprint of our customers.”

Adding the new lines in Bac Ninh is the latest in a series of investments in the South Asia region, following recent capacity expansions in Pakistan, Thailand and Australia.

We remind, мore than 82 companies, businesses and social organizations – including AkzoNobel – are involved in a major Dutch research program focused on developing new technologies that will help solve some of today’s societal challenges. Seven broad consortia have been established as part of the government-funded “Perspectief” program, with AkzoNobel set to play a leading role in the SusInkCoat project, which will explore how to make inks and coatings more sustainable. AkzoNobel’s Como site is the company’s largest plant for producing powder coatings. It supplies products for seven main market segments: home appliances; architecture; automotive; agriculture and construction machinery; trade coaters; furniture; and general industry.

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Maire SpA (Milan) said its subsidiary NextChem has agreed a five-year deal with the Department of Energy of the Milan Polytechnic (Polimi) to collaborate on R&D for chemical and energy-transition catalysts, said the company.

NextChem and Polimi’s Laboratory of Catalysis and Catalytic Processes will work together to develop chemical reactor solutions and associated catalytic process modeling, with the aim of achieving improved results. Up to 90% of chemical processes occur using catalysts, according to Maire.

We remind, MAIRE announces that NEXTCHEM (Sustainable Technology Solutions), through its subsidiary NextChem Tech, has signed a contract with Paul Wurth S.A., a subsidiary of SMS group (‘Paul Wurth'), and Norsk e-Fuel AS for a licensing and engineering design package relating to NX CPO to be applied in the first industrial scale plant able to produce SAF from green hydrogen and biogenic CO2 in Mosjoen, Norway.

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Russia announced additional voluntary cuts in oil supply mainly in the form of production cuts rather than exports, as it faced curtailed refining capacity as well as stricter sanctions, said Hydrocarbonprocessing.

Russia has declared plans to cut its oil output and exports by an additional 471,000 bpd in April-June in coordination with some OPEC+ participating countries. While the world's second-largest oil exporter has been reducing 500,000 bpd in exports of crude oil and oil products in the first quarter, it has decided to scale down export limits in the second quarter and focus on production curbs instead.

Russia has suffered numerous outages and drone attacks at its large oil refineries since the start of the year amid the conflict with Ukraine. Among the oil processing plants which have reduced output are Rosneft-owned Tuapse, Lukoil’s Volgograd and NORSI refineries as well as Novatek's fuel processing and transhipment complex at the Baltic Sea port of Ust-Luga.

Maintenance at the NORSI oil refinery will likely take a few months, according to government officials. Adding to the oil glut will be seasonal maintenance work at Russian refineries in the spring and autumn. Fuel production during these months usually decreases, and crude oil exports increase.

Ronald Smith, a senior analyst with BCS brokerage in Moscow, said that Russia has little storage capacity for crude oil in order to be able to regulate exports. "I can only assume that a signal of oil output cuts relative to exports is indeed just a signal that the refinery repairs will take a few months, which is expected," he said.

Russia plans to gradually ease the export cuts, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak said in a statement on Sunday. In April, it will reduce output by an extra 350,000 bpd, with exports cut by 121,000 bpd. In May, the extra output cut will be 400,000 bpd and exports cut by 71,000 bpd. In June, all the additional cuts will be from oil output, he added.

Viktor Kurilov, a senior analyst at oil and gas consultancy Rystad Energy, said it was highly likely thаt the Middle Eastern partners asked for a bigger contribution of Russia to the OPEC+ production cut. Russia had revised up its oil exports for last month due to more available crude amid decreased refining capacity.

"The focus on production may also be related to the fact that there is volatility in the structure of Russian oil and oil product exports," he said. "Perhaps, therefore, it is not an effective practice to impose strict restrictions on oil and oil products exports under current conditions."

The West has also imposed wide-ranging sanctions against the Russian oil trade, while the United States also last month imposed sanctions on Moscow's leading tanker group Sovcomflot, further hampering Russian oil exports.

We remind, the European Chemical Industry Council (Cefic) said it sees the European Commission’s Strategy on Advanced Materials for Industrial Leadership as a pivotal step toward addressing the challenges posed by the green and digital transition, adding that the chemical industry has an important role to play as the primary source of advanced materials’ value chains.

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A new €26 million manufacturing plant with its own forest has been opened by AkzoNobel in Faisalabad – the company’s largest investment in Pakistan to date, said the company.

The 25-acre site, which has facilities for making decorative paint, wood finishes, automotive and specialty coatings, coil coatings and protective coatings, will help to meet increasing customer demand across a variety of markets.

Also incorporated into the Faisalabad location is a forest spanning an area of 5,450 square feet. More than 1,400 native trees and shrubs – planted using the Japanese Miyawaki gardening technique – are expected to grow into a flourishing self-sustaining ecosystem over the next two years.

“Our investment in this greenfield site reaffirms our commitment to grow in Pakistan,” says Mubbasher Omar, CEO of Akzo Nobel Pakistan Limited. “It will fuel our ambition to diversify with sustainable innovations and enter new segments in the domestic market, while also providing new opportunities to delight customers beyond Pakistan.”

The site, which employs nearly 200 people, has been constructed to comply with the company’s strict environmental standards and includes a series of sustainability features, such as renewable energy generation and energy efficient design.

“We’ve also integrated agile manufacturing to accommodate future expansion in production volumes, thereby allowing AkzoNobel to be more competitive in the market,” continues Omar. “It’s the next step in continuing to build on the company’s 60-year track record of delighting paints and coatings customers in Pakistan with world class solutions.”

The inauguration ceremony was attended by several guests of honor, including Ms. Henny de Vries, Ambassador of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in Pakistan.

We remind, AkzoNobel completes expansion of its largest powder coatings plant. A major capacity expansion has been completed at AkzoNobel’s Powder Coatings site in Como, Italy, which will help secure supply to customers across Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA), said the company. Four new manufacturing lines are now operational following the €21 million project – two of them dedicated to automotive primers and two to architectural coatings. New bonding equipment lines have also been added, ensuring that the products meet and exceed industry standards.

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The European Union is set to call for the fossil fuel industry to help pay for fighting climate change in poorer countries under a United Nations target, a draft document shows, as nations prepare for talks this year on a global finance goal, said Hydrocarbonprocessing.

This year's U.N. climate negotiations in Baku, Azerbaijan, in November, are the deadline for countries to agree a new goal of how much wealthy, industrialized nations should pay poorer ones to adjust to the most severe impacts of a hotter world.

Given the spiraling costs of deadly heatwaves, droughts and rising sea levels, the new climate finance target is expected to be far larger than the existing U.N. commitment of rich countries to spend $100 billion per year from 2020, a target they failed to meet on time.

A draft statement for a meeting of EU foreign ministers later this month showed the 27-nation country bloc will argue the oil and gas sector should also contribute.

The draft EU statement, which sets out the bloc's priorities for climate diplomacy this year, could change before foreign ministers are due to adopt it later this month.

"Recognizing that public finance alone cannot provide the quantum necessary for the new goal, additional, new and innovative sources of finance from a wide variety of sources, including from the fossil fuel sector, should be identified and utilized," the draft statement, seen by Reuters, said.

Countries must decide in Baku whether the new climate finance goal will comprise only public funding, or also pull in the private sector and international institutions, to try to reach developing nations' fast-growing needs. The OECD has said poor nations' actual climate investment needs could total $1 trillion per year by 2025.

EU climate policy chief Wopke Hoekstra has said he will try to rally support for international fossil fuel taxes. But the road to any such agreement is steep, given the broad support needed for a global measure. Talks at the International Maritime Organization (IMO) last year on a CO2 emissions levy for shipping were opposed by countries including China. IMO negotiations will continue this month.

The draft document also said the EU will continue to demand that large emerging economies and those with high CO2 emissions and per-capita wealth - like China and Middle Eastern states - should pay towards the new U.N. climate finance goal. Beijing has staunchly opposed this in past U.N. climate talks. The question of which countries must pay is expected to be a core issue at this year's COP29 climate summit.

We remind, the European Chemical Industry Council (Cefic) said it sees the European Commission’s Strategy on Advanced Materials for Industrial Leadership as a pivotal step toward addressing the challenges posed by the green and digital transition, adding that the chemical industry has an important role to play as the primary source of advanced materials’ value chains.

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