Evonik Industries AG (Essen, Germany; www.evonik.com) is expanding its production facilities in Birmingham (Alabama, USA) and Darmstadt (Germany). This will create additional capacity for the production of biodegradable polymers marketed globally under the brand names Resomer and Resomer Select. These…
SNC-Lavalin (Montreal, Quebec, Canada; www.snclavalin.com) has been awarded an engineering, procurement and construction contract by Corporación Nacional del Cobre de Chile (Codelco), one of the largest copper producers in the world, for the replacement of its effluent-treatment plant at the…
Tesoro Corp. (San Antonio, Tex; www.tsocorp.com) and Western Refining, Inc. (El Paso, Tex.; www.wnr.com) jointly announced a definitive agreement under which Tesoro will acquire Western at an implied current price of $37.30 per Western share in a stock transaction, representing…
Zachry Group (San Antonio, Tex.; www.zachrygroup.com) has been chosen by ExxonMobil to support its Beaumont, Texas, 650,000-metric tons per year (m.t./yr) polyethylene (PE) expansion, which begins this quarter. Zachry will provide constructability and execution planning, electrical and instrumentation design, and…
On October 26, the direct-reduction, hot-briquetted-iron (HBI) plant built by Primetals Technologies (London, U.K.; www.primetals.com) and consortium partner Midrex Technologies, Inc. (Charlotte, N.C.; www.midrex.com) was officially started-up in the presence of the voestalpine board after an effective construction phase of…
The September 2016 preliminary value for the CE Plant Cost Index (CEPCI; the most recent available) was slightly lower than the previous month’s value, continuing a modest decline that began in July. Decreases in the Equipment and Buildings subindices offset…
Total S.A. (Paris; www.total.com) and Corbion (Amsterdam, the Netherlands; www.corbion.com) are joining forces to develop bioplastics by creating a 50-50 joint venture to produce and market polylactic (PLA) polymers. The two partners plan to build a world-class PLA polymerization plant…
BASF SE (Ludwigshafen, Germany; www.basf.com) has started engineering for a stepwise capacity increase of its methylene diphenyl diisocyanate (MDI) production facilities at the company’s Verbund site in Geismar, Louisiana. Capacity will be increased incrementally from 300,000 metric tons per year…
To accommodate business growth and a consequent increase in production and supply chain needs, Novozymes (Copenhagen, Denmark; www.novozymes.com) has obtained land on a longterm lease in the Patalganga industrial area near Mumbai on India’s west coast. With an initial investment…
GE Digital (www.ge.com/digital) announced it has acquired Bit Stew Systems (Burnaby, B.C., Canada; www.bitstew.com) to bring its data intelligence capabilities to Predix and other industrial solutions. Bit Stew applies its machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities to automate the…