Polymers Petrochemicals Polyester Recycling 14-03-2019 - Arhive
- China – Polyethylene Terephthalate
PET and its chain continue to be weak.
- Polyamide6 and its chain continue to be steady.
PET Bottle grade export 1,065/1,100 $/ton – PET Bottle grade domestic market 8,350/8450 yuan/ton – PET Filament grade SD domestic market 7,850/8,000 yuan/ton – PET Filament grade BR domestic market 7,900/8,000 yuan/ton
PTA Taiwan 855/865 $/ton – PTA domestic market 6,550/6,650 yuan/ton – MEG $ 635/645 $/ton – MEG domestic market 5,100/5,250 yuan/ton – PX Korea 1,085/1,095 $/ton
POY 150D/48F domestic market 8,750/8,850 yuan/ton – DTY 150D/48F domestic market 10,500/10,600 yuan/ton – PSF domestic market 8,850/8,950 yuan/ton
Crude Oil Prices Trend
Innova Market Insights identifies “Recyclable by design” as its number one trend in packaging for 2019. Widespread bans on single-use plastics, the implementation of China’s “National Sword” policy and increasing media attention around the environmental scourge of plastic pollution have intensified the demand for recycle-ready packaging solutions. Innova Market Insights labeled 2018 “a sustainability tipping point for packaging” and fully expects the industry to respond with innovative, recyclable designs in 2019.
Innova Market Insights highlights that industry alliances between food manufacturers, packaging suppliers and waste management agencies will be key in achieving ambitious circular economy and sustainability goals set forth by governing bodies and businesses alike in 2019.
It is already evident that the global packaging industry will continue to be dominated by the sustainability debate in 2019.
13th Edition of Graphene B2B Conference Approaches
Like many advanced materials, there is a significant learning curve to progress promising lab results to real commercial products. This includes a learning experience from the manufacturer, for cost-effective high-volume production, and a learning experience for the end-user, to establish the value and utilisation of this market entry.
IDTechEx have been following this market throughout this learning experience, and the 13th edition of their commercially focussed B2B graphene conference, Graphene & 2D Materials, will be held from 10 – 11 April 2019 in Berlin, Germany.
During the previous 12 conferences, the attendees have heard from all the main market players and end-users, with key market announcements made and technical insights provided. As the market reaches a turning point, this becomes more significant as the headlines have greater global impact.
Do you ever wonder what it’s like to be Nigel Farage? Of course you don’t. Why would you want to put yourself through such torment?
But just for a minute, imagine that you’ve backed the wrong horse for just far too long.
With parliament rejecting Brexit deals left, right and centre, leaving Theresa May with no alternative but to try and obtain an extension on Article 50, Farage is literally pulling his hair out.
Apoplectic at the thought of not leaving the EU on 29 March and basically seeing all of his hopes and dreams begin to crumble away, like a stale flapjack, Farage was forced to do something he probably never thought he would do… plead to the European parliament.
Speaking to the assembled MEPs in Strasbourg, Farage wheeled out his usual Brexit spiel before asking Michel Barnier to veto the extension request.
The UK government is to drop trade tariffs on chemicals and polymers to an average of 0.1% in the event of a no-deal Brexit, removing most tariff protection for UK chemical producers.
The move follows another rejection by the UK’s Parliament late on Tuesday of Prime Minister Theresa May’s Brexit Withdrawal Agreement, which could increase the likelihood of a no-deal exit from the EU.
Although Parliament is to hold another vote on Wednesday which could approve a motion to avoid a no-deal Brexit, the default legal position remains that the UK leaves the EU on 29 March with or without a deal.
LANXESS has gone through a series of dramatic transformations over the last half decade improving its resilience as a business, but exposure to weak end markets is likely to weigh on the company this year after a difficult 2018.
– Extensive repositioning of the company in recent years
– Significant remaining exposure to weak end markets in 2019
– Healthy capital reserves following ARLANXEO stake sale
Since rejoining the company, CEO Matthias Zachert has taken significant steps in diversifying its portfolio and reducing reliance on the automotive and rubber sectors, which saw a slump earlier in the decade as well as in the second half of 2018, and a sales footprint overwhelmingly dependent on Europe.
Honeywell International Inc. HON recently announced that its business unit, Honeywell UOP, has been selected by Phu My Plastics Production JSC to provide its state-of-the-art UOP technology in Vietnam. Notably, Phu My Plastics Production will be using Honeywell UOP’s C3 Oleflex technology for the production of polymer-grade propylene at its facility. This will enable the plant to cater to the increasing requirement of plastics in Vietnam as well as other countries in Southeast Asia.
Honeywell UOP is a division of Honeywell’s Performance Materials and Technologies strategic business group, which also comprises Honeywell Process Solutions.
The world is slowly turning into a massive landfill with lots of waste accumulation day by day. Norway is one of the first nations to step up with its impressive recycling game, with 97 percent of its plastic bottles now being reused.
Norway now has a program that pushes both business owners and members of the public to recycle their used plastic bottles. Now, other countries are trying to follow suit and the hope is that someday, the world will be one in this environmental endeavor.
Norwegian Way Of Recycling
The Norwegian system of recycling plastic bottles involves the government putting an environment tax of about 40 cents per bottle for all plastic producers and importers.
With the ever-increasing problem of plastic waste showing no sign of relenting, can a new breed of sustainable polymer end the nightmare?
In 2016, a 17-strong team of executives and analysts working for the Ellen MacArthur Foundation claimed that by 2050 the world’s oceans are expected to contain, by weight, more plastics than fish. For three years they had pored over hundreds of pieces of literature while consulting more than 180 researchers, engineers and policy-makers from universities, industry and government.
Their report, ‘The New Plastics Economy – Rethinking the Future of Plastics’, painted a bleak scene. At least eight million tonnes of plastics leak into the ocean every year; on par with dumping the contents of a refuse truck every minute.
Oil market participants had started to worry in advance about how the U.S. sanctions on Iran in November would impact global supply, causing oil prices to shoot up to four-year-highs in early October.
Just a month later, the U.S. re-imposed sanctions on Iran’s oil industry and granted waivers to the eight key Iranian oil buyers to continue importing oil at reduced rates. Oil prices then started to dive, dragged further down by fears of slowing economic and oil demand growth.
When at end of January the U.S. slapped sanctions on Venezuela’s oil industry and state oil firm PDVSA in order to deprive Nicolas Maduro’s regime of pretty much its only hard-currency income, oil prices barely budged.
Invista Performance Technologies (IPT), the technology and licensing group of Invista, and Pan-Asia PET Resin (Guangzhou) Co Ltd have reached an agreement for the licensing of Invista’s latest purified terephthalic acid (PTA) process technology.
Pan-Asia will utilise Invista’s P8 PTA technology at a scale of 1.25 million metric tonnes per year.
The new PTA plant would be built in Jizan Economic City, Saudi Arabia, and the projected start-up is in the first quarter of 2021. This project signifies Invista’s first technology license in the Middle East.
Biodegradable plastics might seem an obvious solution to the plastic waste problem, but their current form lags behind fossil-based polymers in required properties. Sometimes they don’t even biodegrade that well. Ne research is trying to find a solution.
“Polyethylene terephthalate, or PET, which plastic water bottles are made of, is a remarkable polymer,” says Professor Alex Conradie, who leads the Sustainable Process Technologies research group at the University of Nottingham. “It has very useful properties and given decades of process optimisation invested into PET manufacturing, it’s also very cost effective. It is a tall order to match the properties of such a versatile material.”
Oil prices have been pushed up this year by supply cuts led by the Middle East-dominated producer group of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC).
Oil prices Crude oil rises amid OPEC supply cuts, US sanctions on Iran and Venezuela
Singapore: Oil prices rose on Wednesday, pushed up by ongoing supply cuts from producer group OPEC and by US sanctions against Iran and Venezuela. International Brent crude oil futures were at $66.95 a barrel at 0751 GMT, up 28 cents, or 0.4 percent, from their last close.
