Petrochemicals Graphene BioPackaging 08-05-2020 - Arhive
Petrochemicals Graphene BioPackaging
Crude Oil Prices Trend
-Green Plains calls for strategic restarts from US fuel ethanol producers
US Green Plains executives called for restraint when restarting ethanol plants, asking producers to be smart when they bring plants back online, as consistent oversupply has been an historic issue for fuel ethanol markets.
“This is an industry that is renowned for bringing it all back up very fast”, they said.
While some plants have announced longer shutdowns, others are in what is called a ‘warm’ shutdown, wherein a plant can be up and operating within a week.
Around 20% of the shuttered ethanol plants are in a cold shutdown. It will take around six weeks to get one of these plants back online, according to Green Plains.
-European automotive sector plans recovery
The European automotive sector has proposed a plan to help restart the crippled industry after Covid-19 lockdown restrictions are eased, following closures amid the pandemic and new car sales all but vanishing in April Petrochemicals Graphene BioPackaging
EU-wide production losses since mid March, as a result of automotive factory shutdowns, have reached 2.3mn vehicles, according to the European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association (ACEA).
New car sales have also fallen drastically. The UK automotive market in April experienced its worst ever month as the pandemic closed showrooms and dealerships across the country, causing new car sales to fall by 97.3pc on the year. New car sales in France fell by 88.8pc on the year in April and the Italian market fell by 97.5pc from last year.
-Chemours TiO2 capacity expansions to be stretched out on capex cuts – CEO
Chemours will stretch the timing of its titanium dioxide (TiO2) capacity expansions toward 2021-2022, as it cuts capital spending (capex) on growth projects in 2020, said Mark Vergnano, CEO of Chemours, in an interview with ICIS on Wednesday.
“We’re probably going to be stretching that out a little longer…as we slow those down a bit. We’ll see how long that delay will be, depending on what we see from a demand perspective, and how the year plays out. Those can be restarted at any time”, said Vergnano. Petrochemicals Graphene BioPackaging
-EU forecasts 7.4pc GDP contraction in 2020
The EU and eurozone economies will contract at record rates this year, according to the latest projection from the European Commission.
It sees real gross domestic product (GDP) in the EU27 contracting by 7.4pc. For the eurozone this contraction is 7.7pc, broadly in line with the most recent forecast from the IMF. Petrochemicals Graphene BioPackaging
The commission then sees inflation-adjusted EU GDP growth of 6.1pc in 2021
The commission noted variations across the EU27 because of the degrees to which the Covid-19 pandemic has affected different countries and because of the relative strengths and weaknesses of member states’ economies. Greece (-9.7pc), Italy (-9.5.pc) and Spain (-9.4pc) perform worse than Austria (-5.5pc) and Poland (-4.3pc). It said the EU’s largest economy, Germany, faces a 6.5pc GDP cut, and France faces an 8.2pc cut.
-Selenis polyesters on the rise in protective equipment
Materials maker Selenis is seeing a rise in imports of its specialty polyesters from Europe to the U.S. for uses related to fighting the spread of COVID-19.
Glycol-modified PET (PETG) and other specialty polyester resins made by Selenis are imported to the U.S. from production sites in Portugal and Italy. The materials then are used in applications including medical face shields, retail protective barriers and hand sanitizer labels, U.S. business development manager Scott Sergel said in a May 5 interview with Plastics News.Petrochemicals Graphene BioPackaging
Heavy-gauge sheet made from Selenis materials is used in point-of-sale protective barriers, while thin-gauge sheet is used in face shields, he added. Shrink-sleeve labels on bottles of hand sanitizer also use Selenis materials.
-Low virgin plastics pricing pinches recycling market further
The coronavirus pandemic has piled on top of existing plastics recycling market strife to cause pricing fluctuations and create uncertainty about how end users will meet their sustainability commitments. Petrochemicals Graphene BioPackaging
Recycling markets for nearly all materials have been challenged for the past few years due to shifts in overseas demand. Additional pressure has come from tariffs on recycled materials and other goods, as well as ongoing strife in the freight market.
Now, the coronavirus pandemic has added health and safety concerns, employment shortages and a general slowdown in manufacturing.
“It’s every possible challenge you could imagine,” said Joe Pickard, chief economist for the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries (ISRI), in a webinar hosted by several recycling stakeholder groups last week. He said that the current situation may represent the most difficult time many recycling companies have ever faced.
-Cement additive producer turns focus to plastic waste
A Florida company is working to commercialize a process that uses low-value scrap plastic as fuel in cement production.
Maitland, Fla.-headquartered Cement Lock wants to source hard-to-recycle plastics as a fuel for a cement admixture. The company aims to commercialize with facilities around the country, and under the company’s plan, each would have two kilns capable of consuming 100 tons per day of plastic, said Al Hendricks, CEO of Cement Lock. The company does not yet have any commercial-scale sites operating. Petrochemicals Graphene BioPackaging
Hendricks and his partners in the company in 2007 purchased the technology, which was originally developed to use sediment from Superfund sites as its feedstock. More recently, however, the company began exploring additional feedstocks.
“Over the last 18 months, I shifted my focus into plastic recycling,” Hendricks said in an interview. “We can take that same material nobody else wants, we can chip it or shred it, and use it as fuel to feed our kilns.”
-May European ethylene contract price drops by EUR100 per tonne
The contract price of ethylene in Europe for May deliveries was finally agreed at EUR620 per tonne, which is EUR100 per tonne lower than the level of the previous month, ICIS reported.
The contract price was approved on the terms of FD NWE (with delivery to North-West Europe).
This contract price was directly confirmed by two manufacturers and four consumers of the material, which is the minimum necessary configuration for approving the contract price of propylene.
At the same time, confirmation of the May contract price of ethylene is expected from three more manufacturers. Petrochemicals Graphene BioPackaging
-Covid-19 triggers sharp German manufacturing decline
German industrial production plummeted in March and was expected to have kept falling in April because of Covid-19, the economy ministry said.
Manufacturing output had picked up in January-February (see manufacturing demand graph). Petrochemicals Graphene BioPackaging
But March’s seasonally and working-day adjusted output fell by 11.6pc from February and was the lowest for the month since at least 2015.
January-February output had climbed by 2.3pc from November-December, the ministry said previously, and had been on track to recover from an industrial recession.
-China’s PE, PP inventories increase
Chinese polypropylene (PP) and polyethylene (PE) inventories held by key state-controlled producers Sinopec and PetroChina were 935,000t today, up by 140,000t from a week earlier.
The inventories remain high compared with typical levels of around 700,000t.
But despite the rise in stocks, polymer prices continued to rebound after the 1-5 May labour holiday in China. Petrochemicals Graphene BioPackaging
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