KHALED BIN MOHAMED BIN ZAYED WITNESSES SIGNING OF USD 6.2 BILLION STRATEGIC PARTNERSHIP BETWEEN ADNOC AND BOREALIS TO EXPAND BOROUGE FACILITY

• ADNOC and Borealis confirm final investment agreement to build Borouge 4 in Ruwais, United Arab Emirates (UAE), which will produce 1.4 million tons of polyethylene per annum
• Expansion project includes construction of a 1.5 million tonnes ethane cracker, two state-of-the-art Borstar® polyethylene plants and a cross-linked polyethylene plant
• Borouge 4 will meet growing customer demand across the Middle East, Africa and Asia with differentiated polyolefin solutions in energy, infrastructure, and advanced packaging
• New facility will benefit from industry-leading technologies to significantly improve energy efficiency and lower emissions, with carbon capture study underway
• Upon expansion, Borouge will be the world’s largest single-site polyolefin complex and will supply feedstock to TA’ZIZ Industrial Chemicals Zone Body

His Highness Sheikh Khaled bin Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Member of the Abu Dhabi Executive Council, Chairman of the Abu Dhabi Executive Office and Chairman of the Executive Committee of the Board of Directors of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC), today witnessed the signing of a strategic partnership that confirms an USD 6.2 billion investment agreement between ADNOC and Borealis AG to build the fourth Borouge facility – Borouge 4 – at the polyolefin manufacturing complex in Ruwais, United Arab Emirates (UAE).

The world-scale expansion confirms both partners’ commitment to the growth of Borouge and to support chemical production, and advanced manufacturing and industry in Ruwais, a key pillar of Abu Dhabi and the UAE’s technology, innovation and industrial development strategy. Borouge produces crucial industrial raw materials, which are exported to customers globally and used by local companies, boosting local industrial supply chains and enhancing In-Country Value.
 
Borouge 4 will capitalize on the projected growth in customer demand for polyolefins, driven by their use in manufactured products in the Middle East, Africa and Asia. The facility will also enable the next phase of growth at the Ruwais Industrial Complex by supplying feedstock to the TA’ZIZ Industrial Chemicals Zone.

The final investment agreement was signed at the Abu Dhabi International Petroleum Exhibition and Conference (ADIPEC) by His Excellency Dr. Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber, UAE Minister of Industry and Advanced Technology and ADNOC Managing Director and Group CEO and Thomas Gangl, Borealis CEO.

HE Dr. Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber, said: “ADNOC and Borealis’ significant investment in the fourth expansion of Borouge ensures the long-term and sustainable supply of core materials to critical sectors vital to both the UAE and global economy. This expansion will see Borouge become the world’s largest single-site polyolefin complex, as it continues to play an integral role in the development of TA’ZIZ, enhancing local industrial supply chains and boosting In-Country Value opportunities.

Today’s announcement underlines the continued attractiveness of Abu Dhabi and the UAE as a world-leading investment and partnership destination and underpins the robust value offering from our downstream, industry and petrochemicals sector to key global industry partners and investors.”  
Scheduled to be operational by the end of 2025, ADNOC will supply Borouge 4 feedstock.

Thomas Gangl commented: “We are very proud of Borouge and our long-standing partnership with ADNOC. It is with great pleasure that we continue the expansion of our successful partnership in Borouge. Borouge is the key vehicle that enables us to serve the growing customer needs across the Middle East and Asian markets with future-oriented and differentiated solutions based on Borstar, Borealis’ proprietary state-of-the-art technology.”

Borouge 4 will have an industry-leading focus on sustainability leveraging the capabilities of both shareholders. The facility will utilize Borealis’ proprietary Borstar technology, to produce a product portfolio focused on durable applications for energy, infrastructure, advanced packaging, and agriculture sectors. This unique technology, in combination with hexene co-monomer, will enable the production of advanced packaging grades with up to 50% recycled polyethylene content.

Subject to an in-depth study, a Carbon Capture unit that would reduce CO2 emissions by 80% could also be operational in time for Borouge 4’s start-up. The facility is also designed to capitalize on ADNOC’s recent initiatives on clean energy, decarbonizing its power supply through access to Abu Dhabi’s clean power sources. These initiatives are aligned with the UAE Net Zero by 2050 Strategic Initiative.

The new Borouge 4 facility will comprise:

• An ethane cracker, with 1.5 million tons ethylene output per annum, which will be the fourth cracker in Borouge’s integrated petrochemical complex in Ruwais
• Two additional Borstar® polyethylene (PE) plants, each with 700 thousand tons per annum capacity, using state-of-the-art Borealis Borstar third generation (3G) technology
• A cross-linked PE (XLPE) plant of 100 thousand tons per annum capacity.
• A hexene-1 unit, which will produce co-monomers for certain grades of polyethylene.

Borouge’s value-add materials are used to manufacture a diverse range of products including industrial-grade pipes, cables, films and personal protective equipment.

The first Borouge facility, producing 450,000 tons of polyethylene per annum was commissioned in 2001. Borouge 2 and Borouge 3 took capacity to 2 million tons and 4.5 million tons of polyethylene and polypropylene per annum in 2010 and 2014 respectively.  Borouge 4 will boost the company’s annual polyolefin production to 6.4 million tons, making Borouge the world’s largest single-site polyolefin facility.

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ALPLA puts HDPE recycling plant in Mexico into operation

Increase in annual capacity to 30,000 tonnes of rHDPE from mid 2022

Hard, 11 November 2021 – The ALPLA Group, the global packaging solutions and recycling specialist, has opened a new plant for HDPE plastic recycling in Toluca, Mexico. At the same time, the company has announced it will double its annual regrind material production capacity to 30,000 tonnes from the second half of 2022.

ALPLA celebrated the inauguration of its new state-of-the-art recycling plant for high-density polyethylene (HDPE) plastics in Toluca, the capital of the central Mexican State of Mexico, on 10 November. Among the guests were the Austrian ambassador to Mexico, Elisabeth Kehrer, and the governor of the State of México, Alfredo del Mazo Maza. Following the announcement of the plant’s construction in September 2020, it took a little more than a year for the work to be completed. The investment sum came to around 20 million euros. Around 70 new jobs have been created at the plant, which will be run as a wholly owned subsidiary of ALPLA.

The facility is currently designed for an annual capacity of 15,000 tonnes of recycled HDPE (rHDPE) in pellet form. This regranulate is mainly used for the production of non-food packaging such as personal care products and household cleaning agents. The demand for recycling material is so high in Mexico and Central America that the majority of the output will be used regionally.

Increase in capacity to 30,000 tonnes
With the initial start-up of the new recycling plant, ALPLA is staying true to its strategic focus of thinking ahead and investing in regions where the demand for recycled materials has a lot of growth potential. Georg Lässer, Head of Corporate Recycling, says: ‘We are delighted to be playing an important part in implementing a circular economy locally in Mexico with this new site. In taking this action, we are giving used plastic bottles value and are also promoting plastics collection and the development of the necessary regional infrastructure.’

The success of this strategy is evidenced by the fact that ALPLA can already announce an increase in the recycling plant’s annual production capacity to 30,000 tonnes starting in the second half of 2022. Carlos Torres, Regional Manager Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean, explains: ‘We are seeing increasing momentum in the recycling market, taking one step forward in our commitment to sustainability, and the demand from our customers in the region for post-consumer recycled materials is rising. This is enabling us to already initiate an increase in our production of rHDPE in Toluca.’

Experience with PET recycling in the region
ALPLA has many years of experience in recycling post-consumer PET in Mexico. The first bottle-to-bottle recycling plant in Latin America, Industria Mexicana de Reciclaje (IMER), went into operation back in 2005. IMER is a joint venture between ALPLA México, Coca-Cola México and Coca-Cola Femsa. By joining forces, the partners have established the infrastructure for collecting and recycling used PET beverage bottles over the past 15 years. They produce close to 15,000 tonnes of food-grade flakes from post-consumer PET a year.

Expansion of recycling activities
In early 2021, the ALPLA Group announced that it would invest an average of 50 million euros a year until 2025 in the ongoing expansion of its recycling activities. In particular, it plans to globalise its activities in the area of high-quality recyclates in order to close the materials cycle in as many regions as possible. In all, the annual capacity of the ALPLA recycling companies, joint ventures and partnerships amounts to approximately 130,000 tonnes of PET and 60,000 tonnes of PE.

More information about the company: www.alpla.com

DIEFFENBACHER optimizes material utilization Material-efficient carbon and SMC component production with Fiberforge and SMC cutting and packaging system

More than anything else, sustainable production means saving resources and using valuable raw materials as efficiently as possible. With its Fiberforge tape laying system and the fully automatic SMC cutting and packaging system, DIEFFENBACHER, a supplier of complete composite systems, offers two solutions that significantly reduce material consumption in the production of carbon and SMC components.

The DIEFFENBACHER Fiberforge enables fully automated production of layups from thermoplastic UD tapes for small and large series production. Using the special DIEFFENBACHER nesting method, the tapes are cut to the required length and combined into a layup in a load-oriented manner via a rotary table. “In the process, the tape ends can be trimmed at any angle between -45° and 45° to produce a contour with minimum waste,” explains Marco Hahn, Sales Manager of the Forming Business Unit at DIEFFENBACHER.

Different tape types, even with varying widths, thicknesses and reinforcing fibers, can be combined in one component without manual intervention. “The high degree of automation enables consistent component quality and high flexibility in component design. Compared to organo sheets, our customers achieve high material savings with the Fiberforge. In one sample application, we achieved just 6.7% waste with the Fiberforge, while with the organo sheet there was more than 50% waste. In addition, the angle cut enables diagonal cuts of the tapes and thus saves valuable material,” says Hahn.

By combining length and width cuts, the DIEFFENBACHER SMC cutting and packaging system can generate all conceivable cutting patterns. In accordance with the desired lay pattern, the intelligent nesting control determines the cutting pattern and optimizes material use. Weight deviations from the raw material are measured and actively compensated for in downstream stacking. Error-prone manual steps that could affect production quality are eliminated.

“Combined with our lay-up robotics and our stacking gantry, which is used to package individual blanks before they are inserted into the die, we offer our customers maximum flexibility for realizing the most complex lay-up patterns,” states Hahn. “We also help customers produce more sustainably, efficiently and cost-effectively with our solutions for minimizing energy consumption, which include our short-stroke presses and adaptive accumulator management,” Hahn adds. “Together with our customers, we are continuously working on implementing further ideas to increase sustainability.”

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AQUAPAK SAYS IT IS RIGHT TO RAISE THE PROBLEMS THAT WET WIPES ARE CAUSING BUT TECHNOLOGIES ARE AVAILABLE NOW TO MAKE THEM ENVIRONMENTALLY FRIENDLY

Labour MP Fleur Anderson says that as well as causing environmental damage, the cost of clearing wet wipes from blocked drains ends up on our water bills.  She is proposing a new law to ban the sale or manufacture of wet wipes that contain plastic. 

Commenting on the proposals, John Williams, Chief Technical Officer at Aquapak, said: “We are pleased that the issue of the environmental damage being caused to our sewerage systems and  waterways by wet wipes  is being raised. Current wet wipe design focusses on use rather than  disposal and we need to move to innovative materials to answer the problem whilst allowing continued use of this very useful product.”

“Our patented technology means there is now a solution to the problem. Aquapak’s Hydropol material allows the creation of completely flushable and biodegradable wet wipes on existing manufacturing equipment, whilst also using the functional properties of Hydropol – high tensile strength, controlled water solubility, excellent resistance to oils and greases. It gives wet wipe manufacturers not only an environmentally friendly product, but one which is highly functional and acceptable to the consumer.

“Therefore an outright ban on plastic in the manufacturing of wet wipes isn’t necessary; rather the focus should be on the selection of innovative and enabling materials to maintain the useful properties of wet wipes whilst resolving the problems of environmental damage, blocked drains and preventing associated costs from being passed onto consumers.“

Hydropol^TM – all the benefits of plastic without causing problems in rivers or sewers

Aquapak has developed a novel biodegradable, non-toxic and water-soluble polymer called Hydropol^TM which is three times stronger than alternatives and is designed to be used in existing thermo-processing equipment, giving it a wider range of applications.  Hydropol^TM enables nonwovens to retain their strength whilst enabling flushability and safe biodegradation.

The base plastic is currently used for dishwasher tablets, ingestible pill casings and soluble stitches.  Hydropol^TM ‘s resistance to low temperature solubility and high barrier to elements adds functionality, providing a wider range of uses.  It can be recycled, re-pulped, composted and is distinctively compatible with anaerobic digestion.  Furthermore, if unintentionally released into the natural environment or waste water system, Hydropol^TM – which is non-toxic to the environment and marine safe – will dissolve and subsequently biodegrade, leaving no trace.   

Blown film products commercially available and made from Hydropol^TM include garment bags, ESD bags, organic waste disposal bags and laundry bags for infection control.  Its solubility makes it easy to separate from other materials, simplifying the confusing recycling options that exist for different packaging.

Extrusion coatings and laminates for paper/board applications are at customer production trial stage, including a number of home delivery and ecommerce applications, packaging for dried pet food, snacks, cooked meat and convenience food applications.

Nonwoven fibres for applications such as wet wipes and cellulose combinations for thermoformed trays are currently in development and laboratory scale spunbond and meltblown fibres have been developed with collaboration partners such as NIRI.

www.aquapakpolymers.com

Life cycle assessment of Mondi’s paper for pallet wrapping shows lower climate impact

• Mondi commissioned an independent life cycle assessment (LCA) comparing its Advantage StretchWrap paper to conventional plastic stretch film.
• The ISO-based approach shows that the new paper pallet packaging performs better in several environmental impact categories including climate change, with 62% lower greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions when compared to virgin plastic stretch film.
• Mondi sees LCAs as a useful tool to analyse advantages of different material solutions and guide decision-making.

04 November 2021 – Mondi, global leader in packaging and paper, commissioned a life cycle assessment (LCA) comparing its new ground-breaking paper pallet wrapping innovation, Advantage StretchWrap, with conventional plastic stretch film wrapping. The full study was conducted by an external consultancy, is ISO-compliant and includes an external critical review. Based on the assumption that both materials are recycled at the end-of-life, the findings showed that the paper-based pallet wrapping by Mondi has a lower climate impact as one of the LCA indicators.

The basis of comparison is the potential environmental impacts arising from wrapping one pallet. The LCA examined 16 indicators to understand potential trade-offs between the two materials. It covers all relevant life cycle stages, from raw material extraction, production, up to the application on a pallet at the customer. In addition, the impact of the end-of-life stage is assessed.

The LCA found that Advantage StretchWrap has 62% lower greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions when compared to virgin plastic stretch film, and 49% lower GHG emissions when compared to plastic stretch film made with 50% recycled content. Advantage StretchWrap has a lower environmental impact than plastic in a number of categories including climate change and fossil resource use. The plastic stretch film did perform better in some indicators, such as land use and freshwater eutrophication.

Karoline Angerer, Product Sustainability Manager Kraft Paper & Paper Bags, Mondi, says: “Given the complexities of material choice, we see independent critical reviews as essential to ensuring LCAs that deliver objective and reliable results focusing on the environmental benefits of each material. At Mondi, we use these results as part of our decision-making process in line with our MAP2030 sustainability commitments. Our customers value our attention to detail and how we partner using our EcoSolutions approach to develop solutions that are sustainable by design.”

Gamut Capital Management to Acquire Davis-Standard

Gamut Capital Management, L.P. (“Gamut”), a leading New York-based middle market private equity firm, has announced today that they have signed a definitive agreement to acquire Davis-Standard, LLC and its affiliates (“Davis-Standard”) from ONCAP, the middle-market private equity platform of Onex (TSX:ONEX).

Davis-Standard is a leading supplier of extrusion and converting systems and related aftermarket products and services for the rigid packaging, flexible packaging and infrastructure end-markets with an installed base of approximately $7.5 billion of equipment globally.

“We are excited to partner with the Gamut team during this next phase of Davis-Standard’s long history as a provider of highly engineered solutions to an extensive base of industry-leading customers. The resources Gamut brings to this investment will enable us to not only accelerate growth within our markets but also transform Davis-Standard into a leading, value-added global process solutions business,” said Jim Murphy, CEO of Davis-Standard. “We achieved great growth and performance under ONCAP’s successful ownership and look forward to leveraging the strong foundation we built as we move into our next phase of growth.”

Jordan Zaken, Founding Partner of Gamut, said, “We are very excited to continue to grow the company alongside the Davis-Standard management team. As a leading player in extrusion and converting technologies for the packaging and infrastructure sectors, Davis-Standard offers not only the opportunity to expand with customers in fast-growing end markets, but also to further extend its service offering to support its customers in the aftermarket. Gamut is excited to continue to invest in the business to bolster the comprehensive solutions Davis-Standard provides to its customers in the areas of efficiency, sustainability and automation technology.”

Financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed. The transaction, which is subject to customary closing conditions, is expected to close in the fourth quarter of this year.

www.gamutcapital.com