BASF has given the final approval for the construction of the planned Verbund site in Zhanjiang in the southern Chinese province of Guangdong. The project is said to be on schedule. The focus will now be on building the core of the Verbund, which includes a steam cracker and several downstream plants, for the production of petrochemicals and intermediates among others. BASF... [Read More]

NextChem, a subsidiary of Maire Tecnimont, has been awarded a Front-end engineering design (FEED) contract by a market leader in plastics and chemicals for an advanced mechanical recycling plant for municipal plastic waste in Europe. The aim of the project is to establish an advanced mechanical recycling plant for polyolefins, which shall manufacture products containing... [Read More]

A joint venture between TotalEnergies and Borealis will result in the start-up of commercial operations of a new ethane cracker. Bayport Polymers LLC will have an annual production capacity of 1 million tonnes of ethylene. The $2 billion (€1.98 billion) project built on the site of and operated by the TotalEnergies Refinery in Port Arthur, Texas, represents 14 million... [Read More]

Clariant catalyst chosen for anhydride plant Clariant has been awarded a major contract by Wanhua Chemical Group to supply catalysts for its new maleic anhydride plant - one of the largest in the world. Designed to produce 200 kilotons of maleic anhydride annually, the plant will rely on Clariant’s SynDane catalyst for the production process. The facility will be... [Read More]

BASF has given its final approval for the construction of the planned Verbund site in Zhanjiang in the southern Chinese province of Guangdong. The project is on schedule and will now focused on building the core of the project, which includes a steam cracker and several downstream plants for the production of petrochemicals and intermediates, among others. BASF will... [Read More]

Neste has received a positive grant decision for up to €135 million from the EU Innovation Fund for the company’s project to build chemical recycling capacities at its Porvoo refinery in Finland. Project PULSE (Pretreatment and Upgrading of Liquefied Waste Plastic to Scale Up Circular Economy) aims to implement Neste’s proprietary technologies to pretreat and upgrade... [Read More]

Repsol will invest €105 million in the Puertollano Industrial Complex to build the first plant in the Iberian Peninsula capable of manufacturing ultra high molecular weight polyethylene (UHMWPE). This new plant will be operational by the end of 2024 and will have an annual capacity of 15,000 tons. For the construction of the plant, Repsol has selected the technology... [Read More]

Twelve, the carbon transformation company, has announced $130 million (€124 million) in funding to turn CO2 into chemicals, fuels and materials conventionally made from petrochemicals. Twelve’s carbon transformation technology converts captured CO2 into products historically made from fossil fuels. According to research from Columbia’s SIPA Center on Global Energy... [Read More]

ExxonMobil aims to add 20,000 bpd of light, heavy and extra-heavy lubricant base stocks when upgrades to its Singapore integrated refining and petrochemical complex are completed. The Singapore Resid Upgrade Project will expand large-scale production of ExxonMobil’s global EHCTM Group II slate to meet growing demand for high-performance lubricants in the Asia-Pacific... [Read More]

INEOS Oligomers has announced a phased 50% expansion of its LaPorte High Viscosity (HV) PAO unit. The plant in Texas is expected to be fully operational by mid-2025. The unit was initially built with a nameplate capacity of 20,000 tonnes per annum but was engineered to allow efficient expansion to support anticipated sales growth. It was debottlenecked a first time... [Read More]

Neste has purchased the European rights to Alterra Energy’s liquefaction technology - solidifying the company’s efforts to advance chemical recycling. Alterra Energy is a US-based company that has developed a proprietary thermochemical solution for liquefaction of hard-to-recycle plastic. The company is already running an industrial-scale facility in Akron, Ohio,... [Read More]

Tata Chemicals Europe has opened the UK’s first industrial scale carbon capture and usage plant signalling a key milestone in the race to meet the UK’s net zero targets. The £20 million (€23 million) investment has been completed by Northwich-based Tata Chemicals Europe. The plant captures 40,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide each year - the equivalent to taking over... [Read More]

Neste, Covestro and South Korean petrochemical company SK geo centric are cooperating to enable the production of a major polyurethane raw material. The cooperation will see Neste provide SK geo centric with renewable Neste RE™, an ISCC certified feedstock for polymers and chemicals made from 100% renewable raw materials such as waste and residue oil and fats. SK... [Read More]

Sasol and Uzbekistan GTL’s ongoing cooperation took a significant step forward with the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on the supply of Low Temperature Fischer Tropsch (LTFT) catalysts. The signing took place during Baku Energy Week, one of most prestigious events in the energy sector in the Caspian region, held in Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan. The... [Read More]

Linde Engineering has been selected by Slovnaft to conduct a complex large-scale revamp of a polypropylene (PP3) plant in Bratislava, Slovakia. The revamp will extend the plant’s capacity by 18% to 300,000 tpy of polypropylene, and the storage facility will be expanded from the current 45 to 61 silos in total. The revamped plant, has been designed to offer a higher... [Read More]

PLANS for an innovative £20 million (€23 million) facility in West Dunbartonshire to turn waste plastic into hydrogen and support the UK’s energy transition to net-zero have been approved. West Dunbartonshire Council have given the green light to the plant, the second of its kind in the UK. The plans were lodged by Peel NRE – part of Peel L&P – for the site... [Read More]