- Email: [email protected]
UK: RockTron – cenospheres from power station fly-ash
FOCUS polyesters and high-performance alloys. Total capacity at the plant will be raised by 2500 tonnes/y by 2Q 2010. The last expansion at San Luis Potosi raised capacity here by 1000 tonnes/y during 2003. (See ‘Focus on Pigments’, Mar 2003, 5). In Asia, Schulman opened an 18,000 tonnes/y plastic compounds plant in Guangdong province (China) in 2004. It is now studying feasible sites in western India for the establishment of a 5500 tonnes/y plastics masterbatch plant that could be up and running by October 2010. The Indian plant will be mainly geared to serving customers in the packaging, household appliance and consumer product sectors. Chimie Pharma Hebdo, 28 Sep 2009, (480), 7 (in French) & Kunststof en Rubber, Sep 2009, 62 (9), 66 (in Dutch) & Press releases from: Schulman Inc, 3550 West Market Street, Akron, OH 44333, USA. Website: http://www.aschulman.com (16 & 26 Oct 2009)
Germany: Grafe – masterbatch Grafe Advanced Polymers GmbH plans to spend €9 M over the next three years to expand its capacity for producing colour and additive masterbatches at its Blankenhain plant in Thüringen. The company was founded in 1991 by members of the same family that founded Constab, another German masterbatch supplier. Grafe now employs 230 people, supplies more than 1000 customers and generates annual sales revenues in excess of €30 M. Chemical Fibers International, Oct 2009, 59 (ManMade Fiber Year Book 2009), 15
India: Meghmani – optical brighteners, organic dyes & pigments The Meghmani group (headquartered in Ahmedabad, Gujarat province) has outlined a Rup 1 bn ($21.3 M) programme to establish a new speciality chemicals complex at an unidentified location. The operating company will be Meghmani Speciality Chemicals Ltd and the complex will include facilities for making organic dyes and optical brighteners. About 12% of the overall investment has been specifically allocated to pollution control facilities. The Meghmani group already has 12 manufacturing sites, operated by
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various wholly- or partly-owned subsidiaries, including Alpanil Industries (the largest Indian supplier of carbazole violet), Matangi Industries (producing intermediates for pigments, dyes and agrochemicals) and Ashish Chemicals (producing dyes such as Reactive Blue 21 and Direct Blue 199). Meghmani Dyes & Intermediates supplies optical brighteners from its Ahmedabad plant. These products are the conventional sulfonated triazine-stilbenes. Meghmani’s range includes: disulfonics (used at acidic pH for nylon, wool, silk and other hydrophobic fibres); tetrasulfonics (used at neutral or slightly alkaline pH for standard office paper, rayon, Lyocell and other cellulosic fibres); and hexasulfonics (for photogravure papers). Meghmani Organics owns two pigment manufacturing sites, one at Vatva (near Ahmedabad) and one at Panoli (near Ankleshwar, about 200 km south of Ahmedabad). At Vatva, the company makes 1800 tonnes/y of Pigment Green-7 and 600 tonnes/y of Pigment Green-36. It is planning to establish a high performance organic pigments facility here in the near future. At Panoli, the company makes: 10,800 tonnes/y of crude phthalocyanine blue; 3600 tonnes/y of Pigment Blue-15:2-beta and 600 tonnes/y of Pigment Blue-15:2-alpha. For the first six months of 2009, the Meghmani group declared a post-tax profit of Rup 265 M on sales of Rup 3.86 bn. That compares against Rup 266 M on sales of Rup 4.56 bn for 1H 2008. Sales of pigments dropped from Rup 1.52 bn to Rup 1.02 bn, mainly because export sales fell from Rup 1.24 bn to Rup 730 M. Meanwhile, Meghmani’s sales of pigments to Indian customers increased slightly, from Rup 281 M in 1H 2008 to Rup 291 M in 1H 2009. The group’s sales of pesticides and agrochemicals also declined, but much less steeply, from Rup 2.25 bn to Rup 2.15 bn. Looking ahead, Meghmani sees no real signs of recovery in pigments demand in its major American and European markets, which will exacerbate continuing downward pressure on organic pigment prices during 1H 2010. Chemical Engineering World, Jul 2009, 44 (7), 32 & Press release from: Meghmani Group, Shree Nivas Society Street, Paldi, Ahmedabad 380007, Gujarat, India. Website: http://www.meghmani.com
UK: RockTron – cenospheres from power station fly-ash RockTron is successfully operating a commercial-scale plant at Warrington (about 30 km equidistant from Liverpool and Manchester), employing its own technology for converting fly-ash derived from coalfired power stations into marketable products, including cenospheres as functional fillers. The fly-ash predominantly consists of aluminosilicates and oxides of silicon, aluminium and iron. Typically, for every tonne of coal used in power stations around the world, about 150 kilos of fly-ash is created. Last year, the world generated about 600 M tonnes of fly-ash at coal-fired power stations, with China accounting for 50% of that total. Substantial quantities of fly-ash are currently “stockpiled” at sites near the power stations. RockTron was founded in 2000 and it is headquartered in Bristol. The company’s largest shareholder is Scottish & Southern Energy (SSE), which is the UK’s second largest electric power generator. RockTron’s new plant on Widnes Road (Warrington) is located on land owned by SSE and adjacent to SSE’s Fiddlers Ferry power station. The plant is designed to process up to 800,000 tonnes/y of fly-ash, producing a similar quantity of marketable products. The company lists five such products. The CenTron range comprises a range of clean, classified solid or hollow aluminosilicate microspheres. The MagTron product essentially consists of magnetite for use as a functional filler with magnetic properties. When added to silica/ silane blends, the CenTron cenospheres can improve tyre tread properties. When added to ethylene propylene diene monomer (EPDM) rubbers, they reduce material density and costs. Alpha and Delta Cement Constituent products are pozzolanic products, containing low residual carbon. The Alpha product is suitable for use in cement mixtures. The Delta product is suitable for use in concrete roofing tiles, blocks and pre-cast concrete structures. The fifth marketable product is fuel-grade carbon, with a high ratio of net heatto-sulfur.
DECEMBER 2009
F O C US A sixth product line, currently under development, is MinTron – cenospheres that are around 7 microns in diameter, which could be used as a functional filler in plastics. Tests at Queens University (Belfast) on MinTron cenospheres in polybutylene terephthalate (PBT) and polyamide 6/6 have demonstrated performance that compares well against conventional fillers in terms of rheology, tensile and flexural modulus, elongation at break and impact resistance. The cenospheres are quite dark in colour, but the company is working on a process to coat them with TiO2 or alternative pigments. RockTron is also investigating the production of a true nano-scale material from fly-ash. Just over 3% of the fly-ash generated is initially in the sub-micron fraction. The establishment of the first commercial-scale plant follows development work over the past eight years at RockTron’s 3.2 tonnes/hour demonstration unit at the Gale Common ash-disposal site in Knottingley (near Wakefield). RockTron now plans to build two commercial-scale plants at Gale Common, each with a similar capacity to the Warrington plant. Stockpiled fly-ash at Gale Common comes from the Ferrybridge and Eggborough power stations and currently amounts to about 35 M tonnes. The capital investment required for establishing an 800,000 tonnes/y plant is typically around £30 M. Mr Simon Smith (the new Chief Executive of RockTron) commented: “We think we are ahead of anyone else in the world in our ability to take what amounts to an extremely abundant waste material – which usually ends up largely in landfill sites – and make it into something valuable. We are in talks with potential investors with a view to establishing facilities elsewhere. We hope to build another 10 plants in countries such as the US, China, Malaysia and Russia.” As a footnote, it is worth noting that Omega Minerals (of Norderstedt, Germany) also produces cenospheres from fly-ash derived from coal-fired power stations and this company is involved in operating ventures in Germany, Poland, Ukraine, Russia
DECEMBER 2009
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and India. (See also ‘Focus on Pigments’, Mar 2009, 4). Financial Times, 12 Oct 2009, 4 & European Rubber Journal, Sep/Oct 2009, 191 (5), 32-33 & European Plastics News, 1 Sep 2009. Website: http://www.europeanplasticsnews.com & Press release from: RockTron Ltd. Website: http://rktron.com (14 Sep 2009)
COMPANIES
(Schleswig-Holstein), Geretsried (Bavaria) and Ludwigshafen. These plants employ about 1300 people. While textile colorants are still the main products manufactured and sold by DyStar, the company also supplies auxiliary chemicals and colorants for the leather and plastic industries. Press releases from: DyStar, Frankfurt Am Main, KG 65926, Germany. Website: http://www.dystar.com (29 Sep & 15 Oct 2009)
DyStar files for insolvency of its German operations
Profiltra extends its organic pigments business to China
DyStar Holdings GmbH (of Frankfurt) and its main subsidiaries declared insolvency towards the end of September, having exhausted alternative solutions to the problems of addressing liquidity and cashflow issues. The formal insolvency petition was filed with the Frankfurt Insolvency Court, which then appointed attorneys for supervising the company’s plans for managing its business, including possible asset sales, plant closures, etc. The attorneys are Dr Stephan Laubereau (of Pluta Rechtsanwalts) and Dr Miguel Grosser (of Jaffe Rechtsanwaelte Insolvenzverwalter). In mid-October, Dr Laubereau announced that arrangements had been put in place for the pre-financing of insolvency payments for the employees of the DyStar Textilfarben GmbH & Co Deutschland KG and of the unit within the DyStar group responsible for the purchasing, administration and global distribution of the products. DyStar was created in 1995 by pooling the textile colorant businesses of Bayer and Hoechst. Effective September 2000, BASF transferred its textile colorants business to DyStar and the company’s ownership structure became: 35% Bayer, 35% Aventis (as inheritor of the original Hoechst stake) and 30% BASF. Effective 5 August 2004, the entire capital of DyStar was sold to Platinum Equity, a private equity firm based in Los Angeles, CA. DyStar employs about 3700 people worldwide and reported for full-year 2007 a net loss of €32 M on sales revenues of around €800 M. The company currently operates 19 manufacturing facilities in 13 different countries. Within Germany, the major DyStar plants are located at: Frankfurt, Leverkusen, Brunsbüttel
Profiltra BV is a small trading company, headquartered at Almere in the Netherlands and employing about 45 people. Its main business consists of supplying filters, seals, piping components and speciality minerals, including bentonite, sepiolite, diatomite and perlite. Profiltra has been actively selling organic pigments to European paint, ink and plastic customers since the late 1990s. The company sources most of its pigments from Indian and American suppliers and it has sales offices in Germany and the UK, as well as the Almere office. To extend its global reach in the pigments sector, Profiltra recently opened a new office at Nanjing, China. PPCJ, Polymers, Paint, Colour Journal, Oct 2009, 199 (4541), 4
Synalloy sells Blackman Uhler Synalloy Corp (of Spartanburg, NC) is continuing its withdrawal from the chemical sector. Earlier this year, it completed the sale of Organic Pigments LLC to Spectra Colorants “at book value.” (See ‘Focus on Pigments’, Aug 2009, 7). In early October, it announced that it had agreed on the sale of its Blackman Uhler subsidiary (also based at Spartanburg) to SantoLubes Manufacturing (of St Charles, MO). The transaction was valued at $11.2 M. Blackman Uhler reported sales revenue at $14.5 M for 2008, mainly derived from its custom chemical services, notably hydrogenation, methylation and spray drying. Synalloy’s only remaining chemical subsidiary is Manufacturers Chemicals LLC, which produces dyes, surfactants and lubricants. Chimie Pharma Hebdo, 12 Oct 2009, (482), 7 (in French)
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Germany: Grafe – masterbatch Grafe Advanced Polymers GmbH plans to spend €9 M over the next three years to expand its capacity for producing colour and additive masterbatches at its Blankenhain plant in Thüringen. The company was founded in 1991 by members of the same family that founded Constab, another German masterbatch supplier. Grafe now employs 230 people, supplies more than 1000 customers and generates annual sales revenues in excess of €30 M. Chemical Fibers International, Oct 2009, 59 (ManMade Fiber Year Book 2009), 15
India: Meghmani – optical brighteners, organic dyes & pigments The Meghmani group (headquartered in Ahmedabad, Gujarat province) has outlined a Rup 1 bn ($21.3 M) programme to establish a new speciality chemicals complex at an unidentified location. The operating company will be Meghmani Speciality Chemicals Ltd and the complex will include facilities for making organic dyes and optical brighteners. About 12% of the overall investment has been specifically allocated to pollution control facilities. The Meghmani group already has 12 manufacturing sites, operated by
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various wholly- or partly-owned subsidiaries, including Alpanil Industries (the largest Indian supplier of carbazole violet), Matangi Industries (producing intermediates for pigments, dyes and agrochemicals) and Ashish Chemicals (producing dyes such as Reactive Blue 21 and Direct Blue 199). Meghmani Dyes & Intermediates supplies optical brighteners from its Ahmedabad plant. These products are the conventional sulfonated triazine-stilbenes. Meghmani’s range includes: disulfonics (used at acidic pH for nylon, wool, silk and other hydrophobic fibres); tetrasulfonics (used at neutral or slightly alkaline pH for standard office paper, rayon, Lyocell and other cellulosic fibres); and hexasulfonics (for photogravure papers). Meghmani Organics owns two pigment manufacturing sites, one at Vatva (near Ahmedabad) and one at Panoli (near Ankleshwar, about 200 km south of Ahmedabad). At Vatva, the company makes 1800 tonnes/y of Pigment Green-7 and 600 tonnes/y of Pigment Green-36. It is planning to establish a high performance organic pigments facility here in the near future. At Panoli, the company makes: 10,800 tonnes/y of crude phthalocyanine blue; 3600 tonnes/y of Pigment Blue-15:2-beta and 600 tonnes/y of Pigment Blue-15:2-alpha. For the first six months of 2009, the Meghmani group declared a post-tax profit of Rup 265 M on sales of Rup 3.86 bn. That compares against Rup 266 M on sales of Rup 4.56 bn for 1H 2008. Sales of pigments dropped from Rup 1.52 bn to Rup 1.02 bn, mainly because export sales fell from Rup 1.24 bn to Rup 730 M. Meanwhile, Meghmani’s sales of pigments to Indian customers increased slightly, from Rup 281 M in 1H 2008 to Rup 291 M in 1H 2009. The group’s sales of pesticides and agrochemicals also declined, but much less steeply, from Rup 2.25 bn to Rup 2.15 bn. Looking ahead, Meghmani sees no real signs of recovery in pigments demand in its major American and European markets, which will exacerbate continuing downward pressure on organic pigment prices during 1H 2010. Chemical Engineering World, Jul 2009, 44 (7), 32 & Press release from: Meghmani Group, Shree Nivas Society Street, Paldi, Ahmedabad 380007, Gujarat, India. Website: http://www.meghmani.com
UK: RockTron – cenospheres from power station fly-ash RockTron is successfully operating a commercial-scale plant at Warrington (about 30 km equidistant from Liverpool and Manchester), employing its own technology for converting fly-ash derived from coalfired power stations into marketable products, including cenospheres as functional fillers. The fly-ash predominantly consists of aluminosilicates and oxides of silicon, aluminium and iron. Typically, for every tonne of coal used in power stations around the world, about 150 kilos of fly-ash is created. Last year, the world generated about 600 M tonnes of fly-ash at coal-fired power stations, with China accounting for 50% of that total. Substantial quantities of fly-ash are currently “stockpiled” at sites near the power stations. RockTron was founded in 2000 and it is headquartered in Bristol. The company’s largest shareholder is Scottish & Southern Energy (SSE), which is the UK’s second largest electric power generator. RockTron’s new plant on Widnes Road (Warrington) is located on land owned by SSE and adjacent to SSE’s Fiddlers Ferry power station. The plant is designed to process up to 800,000 tonnes/y of fly-ash, producing a similar quantity of marketable products. The company lists five such products. The CenTron range comprises a range of clean, classified solid or hollow aluminosilicate microspheres. The MagTron product essentially consists of magnetite for use as a functional filler with magnetic properties. When added to silica/ silane blends, the CenTron cenospheres can improve tyre tread properties. When added to ethylene propylene diene monomer (EPDM) rubbers, they reduce material density and costs. Alpha and Delta Cement Constituent products are pozzolanic products, containing low residual carbon. The Alpha product is suitable for use in cement mixtures. The Delta product is suitable for use in concrete roofing tiles, blocks and pre-cast concrete structures. The fifth marketable product is fuel-grade carbon, with a high ratio of net heatto-sulfur.
DECEMBER 2009
F O C US A sixth product line, currently under development, is MinTron – cenospheres that are around 7 microns in diameter, which could be used as a functional filler in plastics. Tests at Queens University (Belfast) on MinTron cenospheres in polybutylene terephthalate (PBT) and polyamide 6/6 have demonstrated performance that compares well against conventional fillers in terms of rheology, tensile and flexural modulus, elongation at break and impact resistance. The cenospheres are quite dark in colour, but the company is working on a process to coat them with TiO2 or alternative pigments. RockTron is also investigating the production of a true nano-scale material from fly-ash. Just over 3% of the fly-ash generated is initially in the sub-micron fraction. The establishment of the first commercial-scale plant follows development work over the past eight years at RockTron’s 3.2 tonnes/hour demonstration unit at the Gale Common ash-disposal site in Knottingley (near Wakefield). RockTron now plans to build two commercial-scale plants at Gale Common, each with a similar capacity to the Warrington plant. Stockpiled fly-ash at Gale Common comes from the Ferrybridge and Eggborough power stations and currently amounts to about 35 M tonnes. The capital investment required for establishing an 800,000 tonnes/y plant is typically around £30 M. Mr Simon Smith (the new Chief Executive of RockTron) commented: “We think we are ahead of anyone else in the world in our ability to take what amounts to an extremely abundant waste material – which usually ends up largely in landfill sites – and make it into something valuable. We are in talks with potential investors with a view to establishing facilities elsewhere. We hope to build another 10 plants in countries such as the US, China, Malaysia and Russia.” As a footnote, it is worth noting that Omega Minerals (of Norderstedt, Germany) also produces cenospheres from fly-ash derived from coal-fired power stations and this company is involved in operating ventures in Germany, Poland, Ukraine, Russia
DECEMBER 2009
O N
PIGMENTS
and India. (See also ‘Focus on Pigments’, Mar 2009, 4). Financial Times, 12 Oct 2009, 4 & European Rubber Journal, Sep/Oct 2009, 191 (5), 32-33 & European Plastics News, 1 Sep 2009. Website: http://www.europeanplasticsnews.com & Press release from: RockTron Ltd. Website: http://rktron.com (14 Sep 2009)
COMPANIES
(Schleswig-Holstein), Geretsried (Bavaria) and Ludwigshafen. These plants employ about 1300 people. While textile colorants are still the main products manufactured and sold by DyStar, the company also supplies auxiliary chemicals and colorants for the leather and plastic industries. Press releases from: DyStar, Frankfurt Am Main, KG 65926, Germany. Website: http://www.dystar.com (29 Sep & 15 Oct 2009)
DyStar files for insolvency of its German operations
Profiltra extends its organic pigments business to China
DyStar Holdings GmbH (of Frankfurt) and its main subsidiaries declared insolvency towards the end of September, having exhausted alternative solutions to the problems of addressing liquidity and cashflow issues. The formal insolvency petition was filed with the Frankfurt Insolvency Court, which then appointed attorneys for supervising the company’s plans for managing its business, including possible asset sales, plant closures, etc. The attorneys are Dr Stephan Laubereau (of Pluta Rechtsanwalts) and Dr Miguel Grosser (of Jaffe Rechtsanwaelte Insolvenzverwalter). In mid-October, Dr Laubereau announced that arrangements had been put in place for the pre-financing of insolvency payments for the employees of the DyStar Textilfarben GmbH & Co Deutschland KG and of the unit within the DyStar group responsible for the purchasing, administration and global distribution of the products. DyStar was created in 1995 by pooling the textile colorant businesses of Bayer and Hoechst. Effective September 2000, BASF transferred its textile colorants business to DyStar and the company’s ownership structure became: 35% Bayer, 35% Aventis (as inheritor of the original Hoechst stake) and 30% BASF. Effective 5 August 2004, the entire capital of DyStar was sold to Platinum Equity, a private equity firm based in Los Angeles, CA. DyStar employs about 3700 people worldwide and reported for full-year 2007 a net loss of €32 M on sales revenues of around €800 M. The company currently operates 19 manufacturing facilities in 13 different countries. Within Germany, the major DyStar plants are located at: Frankfurt, Leverkusen, Brunsbüttel
Profiltra BV is a small trading company, headquartered at Almere in the Netherlands and employing about 45 people. Its main business consists of supplying filters, seals, piping components and speciality minerals, including bentonite, sepiolite, diatomite and perlite. Profiltra has been actively selling organic pigments to European paint, ink and plastic customers since the late 1990s. The company sources most of its pigments from Indian and American suppliers and it has sales offices in Germany and the UK, as well as the Almere office. To extend its global reach in the pigments sector, Profiltra recently opened a new office at Nanjing, China. PPCJ, Polymers, Paint, Colour Journal, Oct 2009, 199 (4541), 4
Synalloy sells Blackman Uhler Synalloy Corp (of Spartanburg, NC) is continuing its withdrawal from the chemical sector. Earlier this year, it completed the sale of Organic Pigments LLC to Spectra Colorants “at book value.” (See ‘Focus on Pigments’, Aug 2009, 7). In early October, it announced that it had agreed on the sale of its Blackman Uhler subsidiary (also based at Spartanburg) to SantoLubes Manufacturing (of St Charles, MO). The transaction was valued at $11.2 M. Blackman Uhler reported sales revenue at $14.5 M for 2008, mainly derived from its custom chemical services, notably hydrogenation, methylation and spray drying. Synalloy’s only remaining chemical subsidiary is Manufacturers Chemicals LLC, which produces dyes, surfactants and lubricants. Chimie Pharma Hebdo, 12 Oct 2009, (482), 7 (in French)
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