Kuraray to raise elastomer prices

Kuraray Co., Ltd has announced a price increase for elastomer products in all regions effective Oct. 15, 2024, or as existing supply agreements allow, said the company.

Kuraray will increase prices by $0.22 per kilogram for its brand products Septon, Hybrar and TU-Polymer.

The company said its “increasing feedstock, process chemical, utility, logistics, maintenance, and other costs have reached a level beyond unilaterally absorbable by self-saving efforts.” Kuraray said it is necessary to recover a portion of these increases to ensure ongoing supply and new product innovation.

We remind, Japanese plastics maker Kuraray is building a $410 million plant in Singapore to boost production of packaging material that could help reduce food waste. The new plant will produce ethylene vinyl alcohol (EVOH) resin, or EVAL, which helps block oxygen and prevent food spoilage. Production is scheduled to begin in late 2026. The plant will have an initial capacity of 36,000 tonnes per year.

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Neste Corp. (Espoo, Finland) has enhanced its chemical recycling capabilities by collaborating with Tepsa Netherlands on the storage and handling of liquefied waste plastic in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, said the company.

This partnership, focused on the implementation of advanced aggregation tanks, underscores the company’s commitment to expanding its liquefied waste plastic processing capabilities and advancing the circular economy. Following successful industrial-scale processing runs, Neste is moving towards using larger quantities of liquefied waste plastic as a raw material at its Porvoo refinery in Finland and turning it into Neste RE, a high-quality recycled drop-in feedstock for the production of new plastics and chemicals.

The aggregation tanks will be located in the Port of Rotterdam to optimize supply chains and streamline logistics. As Neste is securing liquefied waste plastic supply through various suppliers across Europe, this central and major logistics hub offers seamless connectivity to the continent’s expansive infrastructure. The state-of-the-art tank solution and surrounding infrastructure will ensure safe and reliable storage of liquefied waste plastic. The preparation and installation of the tanks have been meticulously planned demonstrating both companies’ commitment to safety and excellence. The tanks are expected to be operational in the second half of 2025, matching the schedule for the ongoing construction of capacity upgrading facilities for liquefied waste plastic in Porvoo.

Neste is advancing chemical recycling of plastic waste and has the ambition to process over one million tons of plastic waste per year. To process larger amounts of liquefied waste feeds, we are building upgrading capacities for 150,000 tons of liquefied waste plastic per year. We are using raw materials like liquefied waste plastic or liquefied discarded rubber tires and refine them into high-quality drop-in feedstock for the production of new plastics.

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Ineos Group Ltd.’s €4 billion Project One ethane cracker investment at Antwerp, Belgium is moving ahead after a delay caused by the suspension of the cracker’s environmental permit following a campaign by environmentalists over the alleged impact of nitrogen emissions.

“Since Ineos regained a permit for Project One in early January 2024, after it got annulled in July 2023, works on the construction site in Antwerp have been in full swing after a five-month standstill,” John McNally, CEO of Project One, told CW in an interview ahead of the European Petrochemical Association (EPCA) Annual Meeting, which takes place in Berlin Oct. 7-10. McNally is also an EPCA board member.

“At this stage, we have surpassed the mark of 1,300 people working simultaneously on our site in Antwerp,” McNally said. “In the first half of this year the focus was on underground and civil engineering works such as foundation works, concrete pouring, laying underground pipes, roads, substations and utilities.”

One key piece of infrastructure has been erected since May — the ethane tank, which McNally calls “the logistics heart of Project One.” With a capacity of 197,000 cubic meters, it is the largest cryogenic tank in Europe, he said.

“After the summer, the site will go really vertical, when the shipped modules will come in, which have been built in multiple overseas yards,” McNally said. “These works have not been impacted by the permit annulment in Antwerp.” The modules include pipe racks, cracking furnaces and process units weighing up to 10,000 metric tons. “At our nearby Lillo site, we are getting everything ready for the reception and construction of these modules,” he added. “The quay wall and the offloading platform, for example, have now been finalized.”

Ineos still aims to go live with the 1.45 million metric tons per year ethylene plant at the end of 2026, McNally said.

But the permitting difficulties have made it “a very challenging journey” since Ineos announced the Project One investment in January 2019 — the first new cracker to be built in Europe for 25 years — McNally said. “We have written a permit application totalling 5,176 pages to get to build Project One,” he said. “When our permit was annulled, it took six months and another 832 pages to recover the permit, in the form of detailed environmental research to demonstrate that our negligible deposition of nitrogen does not have a significant impact on nature reserves. We are now five years later and naturally our permit and legal team is making every effort to ensure maximum legal certainty for the project.”

In July 2024, the Flemish Minister of Environment withdrew the January decision to restore the original permit and issued a new environmental permit for Project One. The new permit also refers to Flanders’ Nitrogen Decree, providing for limits on nitrogen emissions, which came into force at the end of February. “This way legal certainty is increased,” McNally said. “For megaprojects like ours it is extremely difficult to be exposed to this kind of legal uncertainty.”

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U.S. crude oil inventories rose last week as refinery utilization rates fell amid weakening fuel demand, data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) showed, as per Hydrocarbonprocessing.

Crude inventories rose by 3.9 MMbbl to 417 MMbbl in the week ended Sept. 27, the EIA said, compared with analysts' expectations in a Reuters poll for a 1.3- MMbbl draw. Crude stocks at the Cushing, Oklahoma, delivery hub rose by 840,000 bbl.

"As we descend into seasonal refinery maintenance, a chunky drop in refining activity has ushered in a build to crude inventories,” said Matt Smith, analyst at ship tracking firm Kpler. Global Brent and U.S. crude futures pared gains following the report to up a little over 2%. They had been up by 3% earlier in the day.

Refinery crude runs fell by 662,000 bpd, while refinery utilization rates fell by 3.3% in the week to 87.6%, the EIA said. Many refiners begin seasonal maintenance after the summer driving season ends.

"It's a big pullback in the refinery utilization rate. Right there is the vast majority of your build," said Bob Yawger, director of oil futures at Mizuho in New York. "Those barrels get stuffed into storage," he added.

Meanwhile, U.S. gasoline stocks rose by 1.1 MMbbl in the week to 221 MMbbl, the EIA said, compared with analysts' expectations for a 67,000-bbl draw.

Gasoline product supplied, a proxy for demand, fell on the week to 8.5 MMbpd, down from 9.2 MMbpd. Meanwhile distillates supplied fell 3.6 MMbpd, from 4 MMbpd last week.

“The bottom just fell out of summer gasoline demand, and there was a decent sized drop in distillate fuel demand too,” said John Kilduff, partner at Again Capital?

Distillate stockpiles, which include diesel and heating oil, fell by 1.3 MMbbl in the week to 122 MMbbl, compared with analysts' expectations for a 1.54-MMbbl draw. Net U.S. crude imports rose last week by 191,000 bpd, the EIA said.

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Singapore's middle distillates inventories rebounded to a three-week high after falling for three consecutive weeks, official data showed on Thursday, as per Hydrocarbonprocessing.

Stockpiles of diesel/gasoil and jet fuel/kerosene at key oil storage hub Singapore were at 10.742 MMbbl for the week ended Oct. 2, up from 9.807 MMbbl in the previous week, data from Enterprise Singapore showed. Net exports of diesel/gasoil surged by 18 times this week, as total exports grew by more than four times from the previous week.

Usual regional suspects such as Indonesia, Australia and Malaysia were the top contributors, while shipments from China remained absent. China's diesel exports are expected to stay thin going forward, largely due to refinery run cuts because of the persistently weak price environment, in addition to some refinery turnarounds, LSEG Oil Research said in a report.

The country's bulk of exports will comprise mainly of jet-kero flows due to continued growth in the aviation sector and more attractive export margins, while refiners could also push out more gasoline supplies as export economics improve, LSEG added.

Meanwhile, total diesel/gasoil imports increased more than 100% week-on-week, with the bulk of volumes headed to Saudi Arabia.

Arabian Gulf and West Coast Indian diesel cargoes "continue to flow eastwards," as freight rates for Middle Eastern tankers heading to Europe have increased and for East-bound shipments decreased, said Sparta Commodities analyst James Noel-Beswick.

On the jet fuel/kerosene front, net exports dropped nearly 80% week-on-week, as total imports fell at a faster pace than total exports.

Total imports of the aviation fuel decreased nearly 100%, as volumes from Australia, China, Indonesia and Malaysia were absent, adding to the decline. Total exports fell about 84% week-on-week, with volumes from Australia nearly negligible.

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