Specialty chemicals company Clariant has completed the construction of an additional line for bleaching earths in Puebla, Mexico, boosting production capacities by 30%.

Nextpharma will be acquiring two of Lonza’s production sites located in Ploermel, France and Edinburgh in the UK respectively. Both the sites produce liquid-filled hard capsules as well as softgels and with this deal Nextpharma intends to develop its technology for lipid based finished dosage forms.

The American Chemistry Council’s Chemical Activity Barometer rose 1.5 % in January on a three-month moving average basis following a 1.3 % increase in December. The Council also stated that the barometer rose 1.3 % in January on a year-over-year basis.

Under a 50:50 joint venture with Plastic Energy, Sabic will start construction of the first commercial unit to produce its flagship certified circular polymers. The new facility is expected to significantly upscale Sabic’s production of certified circular polymers and will become operational in the second half of 2022.

Emerson has recently introduced a new software to boost process automation and the application of the Roxar 2600 Multiphase Flow Meter (MPFM) for the oil and gas industry. The Rapid Adaptive Measurement software architecture enables the Roxar 2600 MPFM to do parallel computations at 10 Hz and autonomously select the optimal configuration for a particular time period. This leads to more automation in operational processes, reducing the need for what previously were manual configuration changes.

A new bioprocess control unit for single-use bioreactors has been developed for pilot and production scales. In this way, Eppendorf wants to enable the seamless scaling of processes from R&D laboratories to pilot and production facilities.

With the mega investment, Shintech will increase its production capacity by 580,000 tons of VCM per year, 380,000 tons of PVC and 390,000 tons of caustic soda per year at its manufacturing facility in Plaquemine, Louisiana, USA.

The year 2020 was a promising year for bio-based polymers: Sold out PLA in 2019 has led to the installation of increased capacities, PE and PP made from bio-based naphtha are breaking ground and future expansion for bio-based polyamides as well as for PBAT, PHAs and casein polymers is on the horizon. A lower production is only observed for bio-based PET.

Nova has completely revised and introduced an extended third version of its nova’s technology and trend report ‘Carbon Dioxide (CO2) as Chemical Feedstock for Polymers – Technologies, Polymers, Developers and Producers’. The report states that CO2 is used as chemical feedstock for polymers and nearly 1 million tons production capacity has already been installed.

The software company Aucotec has introduced a new, standardized interface to ERP and PLM systems for its object-oriented cooperation platform Engineering Base (EB). The integration platform is capable of shortening the integration time as well as the data exchange.