Sanyo Chemical site in Thailand receives sustainable palm oil supply chain certificate

Sanyo Chemical Industries, Ltd. announced it has obtained the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) Supply Chain Certification for its subsidiary, Sanyo Kasei (Thailand) Ltd (SKT), as per Chemweek.

The company said palm oil, derived from the fruit of oil palm tree, is the most widely produced and utilized vegetable oil globally. However, large-scale oil palm plantation development has led to significant environmental destruction and human rights violations due to poor working conditions in some regions, it added. The RSPO certification is the international certification system, aim to address these issues and to promote sustainable palm oil production and utilization that respects biodiversity and conserves forests, said Sanyo Chemical.

Sanyo Chemical joined the RSPO in 2013 and obtained RSPO certification for Sanyo Chemical’s domestic plants at Nagoya, Kashima and Kyoto, in 2023.

With the certification for SKT, Sanyo Chemical said it has start procuring and using raw materials derived from RSPO-certified palm oil for some surfactants for cosmetics produced by SKT, which are in high demand for use of RSPO-certified palm oil.

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Toyoda Gosei Co., Ltd. (Kiyosu, Japan) is doubling its rubber recycling capacity at Morimachi, Japan, site, to accelerate the recycling of rubber used in automobiles, said Chemweek.

A second line is now being put into operation that will double the rubber recycling capacity to 1,200 metric tons per year. The new line is scheduled to start mass production in 2025.

The company said new line incorporates improved technology to raise the quality of the recycled rubber. “This can increase the percentage of recycled material mixed into new material from several percent up to 20%.”

The recycled rubber will also be applied in other products using the same type of synthetic rubber ethylene propylene diene monomer (EPDM) as the waste material, it added. The company further aims to establish a recycling system that recovers rubber from end-of-life vehicles.

Toyoda Gosei produces plastic and rubber automotive parts.

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Taiwan’s state-owned CPC Corp. restarted a naphtha cracker at Linyuan, Taiwan, on Oct. 18, with plans to ramp up the plant’s operating rate to 100%, said Chemweek.

The plant can produce 720,000 metric tons per year of ethylene, 335,000 metric tons per year of propylene and 102,000 metric tons per year of butadiene.

The unit was shut down on Oct. 4 after Typhoon Krathon hit Taiwan’s west coast in late September.
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China’s Zhejiang Xingxing New Energy Chemical took its 690,000 metric tons per year methanol-to-olefins plant in Zhejiang offline on Oct. 18 due to technical issues, said Chemweek.

The MTO plant is expected to be down for seven to 10 days while works are made to rectify the problem, the source added.

The plant can produce 300,000 metric tons per year ethylene and 390,000 metric tons per year propylene. It consumes around 150,000-170,000 metric tons per month of methanol feedstock and produces 50,000-57,000 metric tons per month of olefins.

We remind, Guangxi Changke New Material has announced a project to expand its existing ABS production capacity by 2025. And the largest of the announced projects, the Zhejiang Petrochemical Daishan plant in Zhejiang, with a capacity of 1.2 million tons of ABS per year, is scheduled to be launched in 2027.

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Rohm GmbH (Darmstadt, Germany) expects to achieve technical completion “shortly” of its new 250,000 metric tons per year methyl methacrylate (MMA) plant at Bay City, Texas, as per Chemweek.

The plant was originally scheduled for mechanical completion in 2023, according to the company’s original project launch announcement in February 2021.

Rohm gave the status update on the US plant’s construction on Oct. 15 as part of a wider outline of its previously announced capacity expansion plans for polymethyl methacrylate (PMMA) in Europe, Asia and North America.

The new plant at Bay City will supply MMA as feedstock for Rohm’s production of its Plexiglas brand of PMMA in the US. Rohm will utilize its LiMA technology at the facility, on which it broke ground in October 2022.

The company did not state when commercial MMA operations would start at the plant. Market sources, however, said they anticipate commercial activity to begin in the first quarter of 2025, according to Platts, part of S&P Global Commodity Insights.

In April this year, OQ Chemicals GmbH (Monheim am Rhein, Germany) said it had completed a project to expand the capacity of its Bay City facility to produce high-purity propionaldehyde. The new capacity will supply feedstock to Rohm’s plant, which is being built on OQ’s site. Rohm’s proprietary LiMA process consumes propionaldehyde, an ethylene derivative, and methanol as feedstocks. The new plant will be the first to use the technology on a large industrial scale.

In July 2023, Rohm announced that, in connection with the scheduled opening of the MMA unit at Bay City, it would close its 150,000 metric tons per year MMA facility at Westwego, Louisiana, in June 2025.

Rohm currently produces MMA at Wesseling and Worms, Germany; Shanghai; and Westwego, according to the company’s website.

The company said in its Oct. 15 announcement that it “firmly believes” that its PMMA molding compounds will remain “an essential material for numerous industries in future.” Despite the “difficult conditions the chemical industry in general faces as a result of global crises, the company remains committed to its ambitious investment programs for polymethyl methacrylate production,” it said.

Rohm added a PMMA production line at Worms earlier this year, as well as a compounding facility for colored PMMA products, it said. It also increased its PMMA production capacity at Wallingford, Connecticut, by converting a production line to enable faster delivery to customers, and expanded PMMA capacity at its plant in Shanghai, it said.

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