Apical Oleochemical (Taixing), an RGE China operation, has celebrated on the completion of the initial phase of its ‘oleochemical industry integration project’ at Taixing in Jiangsu province. Construction for the initial phase began in July 2021 and was completed in March 2023, with production starting in June.
Matt Allen, product manager for elemental analysers at SciMed, explains why testing water for halogen species will be a serious consideration in the near future
Industry has come a long way towards sustainability in the last century. Gone are the days when processing plants would belch unfiltered arsenic and sulphurous fumes into the skies and pour black, smoking waste into rivers.
BASF has inaugurated the expansion of its Innovation Campus Shanghai. Originally opened in 2012 and twice updated through total investments of €280 million, the campus is BASF’s largest R&D site in Asia. The two new R&D buildings will house laboratories for:
* Process engineering, focusing on the formation and handling of solids and polymer recycling technologies
* Dispersions & resins, include robotic automation to test scrub resistance and tensile strength, and characterise coating film appearance
* Metal surface & industrial cleaning processes
International Chemical Investors Group (ICIG), the owner of WeylChem and many other European assets, has acquired two more operations. The acquisition of HCS Group in June followed on from that of Organica Feinchemie in May. Terms were not disclosed in either deal.
Indian agrochemicals giant UPL has announced plans to transfer its speciality chemicals business, including agrochemical active ingredient (AI) manufacturing to its wholly owned subsidiary UPL Speciality Chemicals. This is subject to shareholder approval and should be completed in three to four months.
Origin Materials, which describes itself as a carbon-negative materials company has started up the first commercial-scale biobased chloromethyl furfural (CMF) plant at Sarnia, Ontario. CEO John Bissell said that he expects the products “to be transformative for the chemical industry and how the world generally makes things”.
A kick-off meeting took place on 13 June at Hervás in the Extremadura region of Spain for the Sustainext project. This is the first flagship project to be funded by the Circular Bio-based Europe Joint Undertaking (CBE JU) and aims “to revolutionise the botanical extracts industry with a unique model that can then be replicated by the European bio-based industry”.
