Singapore February petrochemical exports fall 1.8%

In February 2024, Singapore witnessed a 1.8% decline in petrochemical exports, amounting to S$1.06 billion, juxtaposed towards a backdrop of worldwide financial challenges, said Xpert Times.

This downturn was a part of a broader contraction in non-oil home exports (NODX), which barely fell by 0.1% to S$13.0 billion, marking a major reversal from the earlier month’s progress.

The decline in petrochemical exports underscores the broader financial pressures going through Singapore’s manufacturing and export sectors. Elements together with tight monetary circumstances in main economies, such because the US and EU, together with ongoing challenges in China’s property market, have dampened client and enterprise sentiment globally. These circumstances have instantly impacted Singapore’s export-driven financial system, notably its strong petrochemical business.

Amid these exterior challenges, Singapore’s manufacturing buying managers’ index (PMI) skilled a slight dip in February 2024, transferring to 50.6 from 50.7 in January. This minor decline, influenced by the Lunar New 12 months holidays, hints on the nuanced pressures going through the manufacturing sector. Regardless of a year-on-year restoration anticipated from a low base impact in 2023, the sector’s month-on-month momentum may stay subdued within the first half of 2024 because of weakened exterior demand.

Wanting forward, there are indicators of potential restoration within the manufacturing sector by mid-2024. As central banks in main superior economies may start to ease coverage charges in response to moderated inflation, a gradual restoration in exterior demand could possibly be on the horizon.

This easing of monetary circumstances is predicted to help a resurgence in consumption and funding actions, thereby offering a much-needed increase to Singapore’s export-oriented industries, together with its petrochemical sector.

Regardless of the present downturn, the resilience of Singapore’s petrochemical business, coupled with strategic changes to world financial circumstances, might properly place it for restoration and progress within the latter half of 2024. The evolving financial panorama will proceed to check the adaptability and innovation of key sectors inside Singapore’s financial system.

We remind, Air Liquide and infrastructure provider Vopak have joined forces to look into the development and operation of infrastructure for ammonia import, cracking, and hydrogen distribution in Singapore. The companies have formalized their intention through a memorandum of understanding (MoU) under which they will study and explore the joint development of low-carbon ammonia supply chains in Singapore.

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Circular plastics now account for 13.5% of the content in new plastic products manufactured in Europe, according to industry association Plastics Europe (Brussels), said Chemweek.

The association today published its biennial “The Circular Economy for Plastics: A European Analysis” report, which noted that the figure means the European plastics sector is more than halfway toward the interim ambition of Plastics Europe’s Plastics Transition roadmap to use 25% of plastics from circular sources in new products by 2030.

However, the report’s data also highlights several major challenges that Plastics Europe said would undermine the plastics sector’s progress toward circularity. They include growing rates of incineration with energy recovery — up 15% since 2018 — of plastics waste needed as circular feedstock that could have been recycled.

“Whilst the data confirms the shift to circularity is firmly established and picking up pace, it is frustrating that we still incinerate so much plastics waste when this potential feedstock is desperately needed by our industry to accelerate the transition,” said Virginia Janssens, managing director of Plastics Europe. “Without urgent action to increase the availability of all circular feedstocks for plastics we cannot maintain the current rate of progress and realise the ambitions of our Plastics Transition roadmap and the EU Green Deal.”

In total, 26.9% of European plastics waste is now recycled, which means that for the first time, more plastics waste is recycled than is put into landfill; an important milestone in Europe’s plastics circularity journey, the report said. However, to meet the growing demand for plastics manufactured from circular feedstocks, “we need to massively upscale the collection and sorting of post-consumer plastics waste, and increase the availability of biomass and captured carbon,” Plastics Europe said.

The data also highlights that the uptake of circular plastics is not uniform but varies by industry sector. The strongest demand comes from the packaging, building and construction and agriculture sectors. However, others, including automotive and electricals and electronics, are falling behind, the report said.

The report found that in 2022, circular plastics were produced from several sources. The largest source, accounting for 13.2% of all plastics produced, was mechanically recycled, but only 1.0% came from bio-based feedstock and 0.1% was chemically recycled.

“The continent-wide roll-out of chemical recycling, as a complementary solution to mechanical recycling, is essential to meet ambitious mandatory recycled content targets for applications and industries that require high-quality plastics,” Janssens said. “To incentivize the necessary investments and ramp up the deployment of chemical recycling in Europe we urgently need a green light and clarity from EU policy makers. We need legislative acceptance of chemical recycling and the adoption of a mass balance attribution method based on a fuel-use exempt model.”

The report also showed that Europe’s share of global plastics production decreased to 14% in 2022, having been as high as 22% in 2006. “If this continues[,] Europe will become increasingly dependent on imports and its ability to invest in circularity and support the transitions of the many downstream sectors and value chain partners that rely on plastics will be undermined,” Plastics Europe said.

We remind, Companies from across the flexible food packaging supply chain have partnered to launch a new snack packaging that contains 50 percent-recycled plastic and meets stringent food contact requirements. The new packaging was launched in late 2023 in the United Kingdom and Ireland for Sunbites, a snack brand owned by PepsiCo. The packaging is made using an advanced recycling process—a complementary approach to mechanical recycling—that enables the recycled materials to satisfy the demanding European Union regulatory requirements for applications such as food-contact packaging, contact sensitive and medical devices.

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German packaging producer responsibility organisation Landbell and the French technology firm Carbios plan to cooperate to recycle post-consumer PET waste, said the company.

Under a memorandum of understanding (MOU), Landbell will supply 15,000 tonnes per year of PET flakes from Germany to a recycling facility that Carbios is building in Longlaville in the East of France. This first industrial-scale "biorecycling" plant would start accepting material from Landbell in 2026. Carbios, which is investing around €230m in the plant, says it will use its proprietary enzyme-based depolymerisation process to produce the monomers PTA and MEG from waste PET and polyester.

The PET flakes will not be made from bottles, as mechanical recycling of this waste stream is working very well, said Landbell CEO Jan Patrick Schulz and Carbios CEO Emmanuel Ladent in a joint online press conference. Instead, the focus is on packaging such as multi-layer trays and opaque containers made of PET.

We remind, companies from across the flexible food packaging supply chain have partnered to launch a new snack packaging that contains 50 percent-recycled plastic and meets stringent food contact requirements. The new packaging was launched in late 2023 in the United Kingdom and Ireland for Sunbites, a snack brand owned by PepsiCo. The packaging is made using an advanced recycling process—a complementary approach to mechanical recycling—that enables the recycled materials to satisfy the demanding European Union regulatory requirements for applications such as food-contact packaging, contact sensitive and medical devices.

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Rohm GmbH increased the prices for its PMMA and PMMI molding compounds, which are marketed under the trademarks "Plexiglas" and "Pleximid", effective March 15, 2024, said the company.

As far as permissible under existing agreements, the increase will be up to 0.18 Euro/kg for all grades in the regions Europe, Asia-Pacific, Middle East and Africa.

We remind, Roehm, a major European producer of methyl methacrylate (MMA), will acquire SABIC's polycarbonate film and sheet operations in the first half of 2024. The agreement does not cover SABIC's polycarbonate (PC) extrusion business but includes its Functional Forms division, which offers a wide range of polycarbonate (PC) films and sheets primarily sold under the LEXAN brand.

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Shell Chemicals and petrochemical company Braskem have entered an agreement to bring bio-attributed and bio-circular polypropylene to the US market, said the company.

Shell will supply the feedstocks to allow Braskem to manufacture polypropylene for sustainable options to meet growing consumer demand in the packaging, film, automotive and consumer goods markets.

Shell is replacing hydrocarbon feedstock with a bio-attributed and bio-circular feedstock in its polypropylene product.

The independently certified materials are based on a mass balance approach. This is an independent accounting process widely used across the chemical industry.

Both companies aim to reduce their carbon emissions, with Shell’s target being to reduce absolute emissions by 50% by 2030 compared to 2016 levels on a net basis. The agreement is a step for them both towards achieving their sustainability goals.

We remind, Saudi Basic Industries Corp. (SABIC) denied plans to bid bid to acquire a stake in the Brazilian petrochemical company Braskem. The company clarified in a statement today, Feb. 21, shared with Argaam, that media reports based on Brazilian newspaper Valor about the deal are incorrect.

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