In January, U.S. specialty chemicals market volumes fell 0.7%, according to the latest Weekly Chemistry and Economic Report from the American Chemistry Council (ACC; Washington, D.C.; www.americanchemistry.com). The decline in January follows a 1.1% gain in December and a 0.5%…
BASF SE (Ludwigshafen, Germany; www.basf.com) and Kemira Oyj (Helsinki, Finland; www.kemira.com) announced today that Kemira will acquire BASF’s global alkyl ketene dimer (AKD) emulsion business. The transaction is expected to close in the first half of 2014. “Kemira is a…
ABB (Zurich, Switzerland; www.abb.com) officially inaugurated its fifth factory in Brazil in the presence of the Minister of Development, Industry and Foreign Trade, Mauro Borges, and the Governor of São Paulo Geraldo Alckmin. The new plant is part of a…
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,…
JGC Corp. (Yokohama, Japan; www.jgc.co.jp) has signed a license agreement for its proprietary hydrogen sulfide and sodium sulfide production-process technology with Zhejiang Engineering Design Co. (ZED) in China, to serve as a proxy for licensing the technology to Chinese clients.…
ZeoGas LLC (Houston; www.zeogas.com) secures MegaMethanol technology license from Air Liquide Global E&C Solutions, a subsidiary of Air Liquide Group (Paris, France; www.airliquide.com). When completed, the production capacity of the licensed facility will be 5,000 metric tons (m.t.) per day…
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.…
Community groups in Texas and Louisiana and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) have settled a lawsuit filed in May 2013 to compel EPA to review outdated and inaccurate formulas that are used to report the levels of toxic emissions…
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…
Seasonal factors from an unusual winter across the country have likely skewed statistical reporting from government agencies despite attempts to adjust for them. Nonetheless, the pace of economic expansion continues to moderate from the fourth quarter of 2013, according to…