Latest News
Umicore to acquire metathesis catalysts business from Materia
Umicore N.V. (Brussels, Belgium; www.umicore.com) has reached an agreement to acquire Materia´s metathesis catalyst IP and business portfolio for a price of $27 million. Materia is a leading U.S.-based producer of metathesis catalysts and thermoset resins. Its metathesis business is…
Stamicarbon wins contracts for a new, ultra-low-energy urea plant in China
Stamicarbon B.V. (Sittard, the Netherlands; www.stamicarbon.com), part of Maire Tecnimont Group, and Jiujiang Xinlianxin Fertilizer Co., (XLX), have signed contracts for the licensing of technology and for the delivery of proprietary equipment for a new ultra-low-energy urea plant to be…
Evonik invests in Danish hydrogen peroxide start-up HPNow
Evonik Industries AG (Essen, Germany; www.evonik.com) has invested in the startup HPNow ApS (Copenhagen, Denmark; www.hpnow.dk) through its venture capital unit and now holds a minority stake in the company. HPNow has developed a technology for producing hydrogen peroxide in…
Formosa Plastics to increase PVC production in Baton Rouge
Formosa Plastics Corp., USA (Livingston, N.J.; www.fpcusa.com) will expand its production of polyvinyl chloride (PVC) resin at its facility in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. The production expansion will increase annual production capacity by 300 million pounds and is expected to start…
Mitsubishi Heavy Industries installs carbon-capture unit at Nippon Ekitan carbonic acid facility
Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Ltd. (MHI; Tokyo; www.mhi.com) has completed installation of a carbon dioxide (CO2) capture unit at Nippon Ekitan Corp.'s Mizushima Plant in Kurashiki, Okayama Prefecture. The new unit offers a recovery capacity of 283 metric tons per day…
Sabic starts up polypropylene extrusion facility in the Netherlands
Saudi Basic Industries Corp. (Sabic; Riyadh, Saudi Arabia; www.sabic.com) announced the startup of its new polypropylene (PP) extrusion facility in Geleen, The Netherlands. This new extrusion line adopts state-of-the-art process technology to produce Sabic PP and underlines the company’s drive…
Statkraft to build advanced biofuels plant based on forest-material feedstock
Silva Green Fuel A.S., a joint venture (JV) company owned by Statkraft (Oslo, Norway; www.statkraft.com) and forest-owner association Södra will build a demonstration plant with the objective of producing advanced (second-generation) biofuel from forest feedstock. The plant will be located…
ABB to reorganize EPC activites into JV with Arkad
The Industrial Automation division of ABB(Zurich, Switzerland; www.abb.com) has announced that closing of the transaction to form the oil & gas EPC (engineering, procurement and construction) joint venture (JV) with Arkad Engineering and Construction Ltd., a fully integrated EPC contractor…
CB&I to merge with upstream service provider McDermott International in $6-billion deal
McDermott International, Inc. (Houston; www.mcdermott.com) and CB&I (The Woodlands, Tex.; www.cbi.com) announced that the companies have agreed to combine in an all-stock transaction to create a premier fully vertically integrated onshore-offshore company, with a broad engineering, procurement, construction and installation…
Técnicas Reunidas wins refinery-upgrade contract from SOCAR
Técnicas Reunidas S.A. (TR; Madrid, Spain; www.tecnicasreunidas.es) has been selected by the State Oil Company of Azerbaijan Republic (SOCAR) for the execution of a modernization project at the Heydar Aliyev petroleum refinery in Baku, Azerbaijan. The aim of this project…