Unilever PLC (London; www.unilever.com) has acquired a majority stake in the Qinyuan Group, a leading Chinese water purification business for an undisclosed amount. Qinyuan generated sales approaching €140 million (c. 1.2 billion RMB) for the 12-month period ending 31 December…
FMC Corp. (Philadelphia, Pa.; www.fmc.com) has announced plans to separate into two independent public companies, "New FMC," which will be comprised of FMC's Agricultural Solutions and Health and Nutrition segments and "FMC Minerals," which will be comprised of FMC's current…
ExxonMobil Chemical Company (Houston, Tex.; www.exxonmobilchemical.com) has announced that it will build facilities to manufacture premium halobutyl rubber and hydrogenated hydrocarbon resin at its recently expanded petrochemical complex in Singapore. Engineering and procurement activities have begun, with construction expected to…
Gevo, Inc. (Englewood, Colo.; www.gevo.com) has announced that Porta Hnos S.A. (Cordoba, Argentina; www.portahnos.com.ar) has signed a letter of intent to become the exclusive licensee of Gevo’s GIFT process technology in Argentina to produce renewable isobutanol. Gevo is said to…
BASF SE (Ludwigshafen, Germany; www.basf.com) broke ground on a new resin and electrocoat (e-coat) plant at the Shanghai Chemical Industry Park in Shanghai. With its operation scheduled to commence in the second half of 2015, the plant will help to…
Akzo Nobel N.V. (AkzoNobel; Amsterdam, the Netherlands; www.akzonobel.com) has completed the expansion of its Industrial Coatings site in Songjiang near Shanghai in China, doubling annual production capacity and creating the company’s biggest plant for packaging coatings in the world. …
Evonik Industries AG (Essen, Germany; www.evonik.com) has acquired Silbond Corp. (Weston, Mich.), a supplier of silicic acid esters. As a special group of functional silanes, silicic acid esters are used in a wide variety of applications, such as in the…
Huntsman Corp. (The Woodlands, Tex.; www.huntsman.com) held an inauguration ceremony to mark the official opening of its new thermoplastic polyurethanes (TPU) production facility at the Jinshan Second Industry Zone in Shanghai, China. The 21,000-m2 plant, which cost $20 million,…
Showa Denko K.K. (SDK; Tokyo, Japan; www.sdk.co.jp) has decided to increase its capacity for high-purity nitrous oxide (N2O), a specialty gas for semiconductor production, by cooperating with Dooam Industrial (Dooam), of South Korea. Dooam is headquartered in Anseong, Gyeonggi Province.…
Styron Europe GmbH (Horgen, Switzerland; www.styron.com), a materials company and manufacturer of plastics, latex and rubber, has announced plans to expand its latex capacity with a new reactor at its Zhangjiagang, China, production facility. This expansion will mainly support the…