Perstorp and BRB, subsidiaries of Petronas Chemicals Group (PCG), inaugurated an innovation hub in Shanghai, China. The laboratory will support growth in the region by increasing technical support for customers.
China’s chemical industry is diversifying markets, boosting innovation, and strengthening supply chains to counter US tariffs and maintain export resilience.
BASF has divested its shares in the joint venture companies, BASF Markor Chemical Manufacturing (Xinjiang) Co., Ltd. and Markor Meiou Chemical (Xinjiang) Co., Ltd. in Korla, China, to Verde Chemical Singapore Pte. Ltd.
Cellasto, the world leader in Noise, Vibration and Harshness (NVH) components, is investing roughly €60 million to establish a second plant in Shanghai, China.
Clariant is expanding its Cangzhou production site to manufacture the multifunctional additive Nylostab S-EED.
Ambiopharm, a US-based pharmaceutical services company specializing in peptide manufacturing, recently announced the groundbreaking of a 70,000-square-foot (6,504 m2) capacity expansion project at its Shanghai manufacturing site. This $28 million (€26.6 million) project reflects the company’s commitment to serving growing global demand and confidence in China’s vital role in the global pharmaceutical supply chain.
Covestro will start the construction of a new Thermoplastic Polyurethanes (TPU) APAC Application Development (AD) Center in Guangzhou, China.
A newly updated and automated production line is operational at AkzoNobel’s Suzhou site in China. The improvements are part of a €14 million investment to accelerate growth and double the plant’s marine and protective coatings capacity by 2025.
Ineos Styrolution, a styrenics producer, has opened a new world-scale ABS (acrylonitrile butadiene styrene) facility located in Ningbo, China, together with its joint venture partner Sinopec. The facility has an annual nameplate capacity of 600,000 tons.
Orion opens its first greenfield project – a carbon black plant in eastern China that will supply fast-growing demand in Asia.
Arkema starts Sartomer UV/LED resin production at its Nansha, China facility, doubling capacity to fuel sustainable solutions for emerging Asian markets like advanced electronics and renewable energies.
Röhm expands its presence for MMA (Methyl Methacrylate) and PMMA (Polymethyl Methacrylate) production in Asia. China, as the world's largest market for these products, represents a prime opportunity for Röhm's specialized innovations. This development represents a pivotal point in the company's broader expansion efforts.
China’s chemical industry originally focused primarily on basic chemicals, in line with the domestic needs of a developing economy and the lower technology requirements for the production of these materials. By now, China dominates the global market for many such chemicals – for example, the country accounts for about 55% of the global capacity for acetic acid, about 50% of the global carbon black capacity and about 45% of the global capacity for titanium dioxide. For many such commodity chemicals, China started out as a net importer, then built up domestic capacity and ended up being a major exporter.
As part of an agreement with China’s Nantong Economic and Technological Development Area (NETDA), Germany’s Merck said it plans to spend €70 million to expand production capacity for highly-purified reagents at its site in the Chinese city of the same name, a major transportation hub in the Yangtze River Delta region.
The Chinese chemical distribution market is very likely the largest in the world. To be successful in this competitive market, foreign distributors in particular need to consider some important aspects.
Nouryon has announced plans to “signficantly” increase capacity for organic peroxides at its site in Ningbo, China. The Dutch specialty chemicals producer will double capacity of its Perkadox 14 and Trigonox peroxides to 6,000 t/y each by mid-2024.
As April winds down and major German chemical companies hold their annual shareholder meetings, questions are being asked whether about the country is tying its trade too closely to with China and repeating the same mistakes it made earlier by becoming dependent on Russian gas.
Italian polyamide and polymer specialist Radici has opened a new manufacturing plant in Suzhou, China, stepping up its presence in the Asian market. The site is designed to double capacity for engineering polymers, serving various markets that include automotive, electrical/electronics, consumer and industrial goods.
AkzoNobel has agreed to buy Sherwin-Williams’ Chinese decorative paints business for an undisclosed sum. The transaction is expected to close in the second half of this year. The business has annual revenues of about €100 million and employs about 300 people.
With much fanfare, Swiss specialty chemicals producer Clariant has opened a new production facility for its Catofin-branded catalysts completed late last year at Jiaxing in China’s Zhejiang Province.
Historically, China’s chemical industry has mainly been located in coastal provinces, with Shandong as the biggest and Jiangsu as the second biggest province by chemical sales, while the coastal regions of Hebei, Tianjin, Zhejiang, Liaoning and Guangdong are also among the top ten producers of chemicals.
BASF is expanding its global capacity for aroma ingredients citral, menthol and lnaloon at existing locations in China and Germany. The biggest investment will involve construction of a new citral plant at its growing integrated site in Zhanjiang, China. New plants for menthol and linalool will to be built at Ludwigshafen.
In 2021, the new patent law came into force in China. It represents a significant strengthening of protection against patent infringements.
It has gone somewhat quiet around new European joint ventures in China of late, but Ineos has just announced three back-to-back projects with Chinese state-owned Sinopec that it said are worth altogether $7 billion and will lead to sales of around $10 billion from 7 million tonnes of production.
Dutch paints and coatings group AkzoNobel has invested an undisclosed sum in a new production line in China for water-based texture paints.
It sometimes seems that everyone running a business always thinks that times are tougher now than they used to be. For producers — and buyers — of commodity chemicals, this thinking will take the more specific form of concerns about increased price volatility.
Chinese oil and petrochemicals giant Sinopec is planning what it says is its highest capital spending budget in corporate history for 2022 after posting its highest profit in a decade in 2021. In a filing to the Shanghai stock exchange, the group said it expects to spend 198 billion yuan ($31.10 billion) this year, 18% more than last year.
Chinese small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the chemical industry and other industries have achieved rapid growth in the past years and are contributing to China’s economic development.
China’s 14th Five-Year Plan “145” suggests that the dynamics initiated by the previous Five-Year Plan are to be maintained and even surpassed. As in the previous planning period, high priority is given to modernizing the country and the economy through R&D.
Agile and resilient: This is how manufacturers in the life sciences industry could be described during the Covid-19 pandemic. As disruption took hold in many other industries’ supply chains, life sciences companies moved to rapidly develop new products and build new capacity. They are maintaining this momentum, with pharmaceutical and biotech businesses showing continued interest in expanding existing operations in Europe or starting operations from scratch.
China`s 14th Five-Year Plan (FYP) covering the period from 2021 to 2025 will only be published after its acceptance by the National People`s Congress in March 2021.
