Germany based Lanxess Group saw sales grow by 4% in fiscal 2012 to EUR 9,094 million. “2012 was the best year in our growth story so far. Our business model proved itself once again,” said Lanxess’ Chairman of the Board of Management, Axel C. Heitmann, at the Annual Press Conference in Dusseldorf. Business development was driven by the focus on emerging markets, solid demand for agrochemicals, pleasing contributions from acquisitions and the price before- volume strategy, the company said in a statement.
India performance
Lanxess in India was also consistent in its performance in 2012 as compared to 2011, achieving sales of about Rs.1,672 crore in this fiscal. “We have benefited from the increase in domestic demand in certain segments like paints and coatings, pharmaceuticals and agrochemicals and done well in businesses that are driven by these segments. The Business unit Segment Advanced Intermediates has shown a significant growth of 11% this year majorly coming from our manufacturing facility at Nagda. This has somewhat offset the drop in demand from the automotive and tire industries in 2012, on which our rubber businesses are dependent” added Venkatesh Sankaran, Chief Financial Officer, LANXESS India.
The Asia-Pacific region saw sales grow by about 10% to about EUR 2.2 billion. In Greater China (Hong Kong, China, Taiwan), the EUR 1 billion sales threshold was exceeded for the first time. In the BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa), sales moved forward by 1% year-on-year to over EUR 2.2 billion.
Expenditure
For the current year, Lanxess is again planning capital expenditures of some EUR 650 million to EUR 700 million. Research and development expenditures are expected to grow by about 10% in 2013 from EUR 192 million in the previous year.
New capacities coming on stream during the year will contribute to growth in all three segments. “The new butyl rubber plant in Singapore – our biggest capital expenditure project so far, at some EUR 400 million – has started up in the first quarter and will begin commercial production in the third quarter as planned,” said Heitmann. In addition, Lanxess will start up a new leather chemicals facility in China in April. At the beginning of March, a new project for high-performance rubbers used in “Green Tires” was initiated in Brazil. The transfer of company headquarters to Cologne is proceeding on schedule. The new Group headquarters building will be inaugurated on September 3, 2013.
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Technip has won a contract from JBF Petrochemicals, a wholly owned subsidiary of JBF Industries Ltd, for 1.25 million tons per year purified terephthalic acid (PTA) unit, to be located in the Special Economic Zone in Mangalore, India. PTA is the primary feedstock for polyesters used in textiles and packaging.
The contract covers the basic engineering, front-end engineering design, detailed engineering and procurement services for the ISBL (Inside Battery Limit) and the OSBL (Outside Battery Limit) of the unit. The scope of work also includes supply of materials and construction management services for the ISBL. The plant will feature BP’s leading-edge proprietary PTA technology. Technip’s operating centers in Rome, Italy and in Chennai, Mumbai and Delhi in India will execute the contract, which is scheduled to be completed in the first semester of 2015.
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The inaugural IChemE Andrew Medal was awarded to Chris Hardacre, head of chemistry and chemical engineering at Queen’s University Belfast, UK in recognition of his contribution to the field of heterogeneous catalysis. Hardacre will be presented with the prize, introduced in memory of the late Syd Andrew, a distinguished professor in the field, at the Institution’s first Chemical Engineering and Catalysis conference in London in June. Hardacre’s research is recognised as world-leading and brings together chemical engineers and chemists.”We study the fundamental mechanisms of heterogeneously catalysed reactions in both liquid and gas phases via conventional and new in-situ techniques developed in Queen’s. These methods provide information on both the catalyst structure and kinetics of the surface processes under realistic conditions. This experimental data coupled with the understanding obtained through strong interactions with theoreticians have led to step changes in both catalyst activity and selectivity, which our industrial partners have been able to further develop,” says Hardacre. Examples of the application of the research include new catalysts for low temperature hydrogenation of acids and amides, increased efficiency of liquid phase dehydrogenations and higher activity emission control systems.
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German specialty chemicals company Lanxess is expanding its global production network for inorganic pigments in China. A new 25,000 metric tons high-tech facility for premium iron oxide red pigments is being constructed at the Ningbo Chemical Park on the Chinese East Coast with an investment of about € 55 million. Construction will begin in the second quarter 2013. The production startup is scheduled for the first quarter of 2015.
Ningbo, located in the coastal province of Zhejiang, is China’s second largest cargo port. The location for the new plant is the Ningbo Petrochemical Economic & Technological Development Zone (NPEDZ). The new Lanxess site will initially cover roughly seven hectares. A further plot of similar size has been reserved for potential expansion.
Lanxess will manufacture high quality iron oxide red pigments at the new plant using an improved and highly sustainable Penniman process. “With our advanced and innovative production process, we are raising the bar for the production of iron oxide pigments worldwide especially in terms of water treatment, waste gas cleaning and energy consumption,” said Joerg Hellwig, Head of the Inorganic Pigments business unit. “In addition, the new plant will strengthen our global production network of existing plants in Germany, China and Brazil,” he added.
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Shell US Gas & Power LLC, a subsidiary of Royal Dutch Shell plc, and Southern Liquefaction Company, LLC, a Kinder Morgan company and unit of El Paso Pipeline Partners, L.P., announced their intent to form a limited liability company to develop a natural gas liquefaction plant in two phases at Southern LNG Company, LLC’s existing Elba Island LNG Terminal, near Savannah, Georgia, US. “This announcement underscores how the abundance of natural gas in the U.S. is changing the energy landscape,” said Marvin Odum, President of Shell Oil Company. The project will use Shell’s innovative smallscale liquefaction unit, which will be integrated with the existing Elba Island facility and enable rapid construction compared to traditional large-scale plants.
The total project is expected to have liquefaction capacity of approximately 2.5 million tonnes per year (mtpa) of LNG. As an integrated energy company, Shell has an array of long-term options for natural gas that will broaden the energy mix. This includes extracting ethane and other natural gas liquids for petrochemicals production; shipping solutions for LNG; and proprietary gas-to-liquids technology to produce fuels, lubricants and chemicals.
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Foster Wheeler’s Global Engineering and Construction Group has signed a global Enterprise Framework Agreement (EFA) with Shell Global Solutions International B.V. Under this agreement, Shell may request Foster Wheeler to provide support in the preparation of basic engineering packages for the following Shell technologies: distillation, hydrocracking, hydrotreating, thermal conversion, ethylene oxide, pyrolysis gas, fluid catalytic cracking and CANSOLV sulfur dioxide scrubbing.
The agreement is for a five-year period, with an option for Shell and Foster Wheeler to agree to extend the agreement for another five years. Foster Wheeler will record bookings as work orders are received from
Shell. Foster Wheeler already has in place a five-year Asian Enterprise Framework Agreement initiated last year with Shell under which Foster Wheeler is providing engineering and project management services
for Shell downstream and midstream projects in Asia and elsewhere.
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Sabah Shell Petroleum Company Ltd (SSPC) has awarded Technip’s joint venture with Malaysia Marine and Heavy Engineering Sdn Bhd (MMHE), a contract for the engineering, procurement and construction of a tension leg platform (TLP) for the TLP Malikai Deepwater Project.
This TLP will be designed as a fully-manned platform to be installed 110 kilometers offshore Sabah, Malaysia, at a water depth of approximately 500 meters. The TLP will weigh approximately 26,000 metric tonnes which will have facilities to process 60,000 barrels of oil and 1.4 million cubic meters per day of gas, and a hull.
Technip will lead the joint venture, with engineering and procurement to be carried out at its operating center in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The tendons will be fabricated in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico, and transported to Malaysia for installation at the Malikai field. Hull and moorings engineering will be performed in Kuala Lumpur by Technip MHB Hull Engineering (TMH), a JV between Technip and MHB set up in 2011. The Malikai TLP will be constructed and commissioned at MMHE’s fabrication yard at Pasir Gudang in Johor, Malaysia. The work is scheduled for completion in mid-2015.
Dominique de Soras, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of MHB, remarked: “This project is the first TLP to be deployed in Malaysia and the third floating platform for deepwater fields in the country.”
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The consortium of Technip, AFCONS Infrastructure Ltd and TH Heavy Engineering Berhad was awarded a contract by Oil & Natural Gas Corporation Ltd (ONGC), worth approximately €220 million for the Heera Redevelopment (HRD) process platform project in the Arabian Sea.
The scope of work includes engineering, procurement, fabrication, transportation, installation, hook-up and commissioning of the HRD process platform, shifting of the existing cable in the seabed, installation of a new bridge connecting the existing HRC process platform, the strengthening of the existing bridge and the modification on an existing HRC process platform to ensure interconnections between all the process lines and the utilities.
The project is scheduled to be completed in the first semester of 2015.
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World Bank arm IFC, which until recently held 10.88 per cent stake in Kanoria Chemicals & Industries Ltd (KCIL), has reduced its holding to 2.52 per cent, according to newspaper reports. IFC offloaded a significant chunk of its holding in December when the company was running a 10 per cent buyback programme. KCIL has now become a 54 per cent subsidiary of a promoter entity – Vardhan Ltd. The buyback scheme, which begun in September last year, will close on February 28.
KCIL will now focus on its formaldehyde project in Vizag, after divesting its chloro-chemicals business in 2011. KCIL also has hexamine units in Hyderabad and Ankleshwar with a combined capacity of 11,600 tpa.
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The Royal Society of Chemistry has signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) to raise awareness of the importance of cheminformatics - or eScience – in accelerating the discovery of novel therapies for neglected diseases such as tuberculosis and malaria. The RSC will work in partnership with India’s CSIR on an Open Source Drug Discovery (OSDD) initiative for the next three years.
The initiative aims to advance the discipline of cheminformatics to find novel, faster-acting and more effective treatments for tuberculosis and malaria. It will focus on building a joint online repository of real and virtual
molecular structures, along with developing free-to-use software tools for drug discovery and development. RSC Immediate Past President, Professor David Phillips said, “Through this agreement, the RSC and CSIR are responding to the challenge of ‘lost data’ - that is the 90% of research output that never gets published and yet is of enormous potential value to the chemical community. The importance of cheminformatics, or eScience, in addressing this challenge cannot be underestimated. “We will work with CSIR to develop focus workshops and conferences to build links between experts and leaders. We also plan to jointly develop free to- use software tools especially for chemical structure-activity relationship analysis.
“The RSC and CSIR will also work together on a ‘Developing Talent on Drug Discovery’ workstream. The aim of this is to examine the role of industry/ academia collaboration in drug discovery and the significance of an effective chemistry-biology interface.”
Professor Samir K Brahmachari, Director General CSIR and Chief Mentor OSDD underlined the importance of this collaboration for finding new drugs for neglected diseases like tuberculosis (TB). He said, “What we cannot do alone, we with complementary skills, need to work together. Finding new drugs for TB is a major challenge. We are joining hands to find new chemical entities which could be potential anti-TB drugs.”
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