China is catching up in the fine chemcials sector. The communist state and party leadership in Beijing intends to use a series of targeted support measures to accelerate the development of the industry in order to become more self-sufficient towards foreign countries.

Baker Hughes and Dussur have plans to form a chemicals joint venture which will focus on providing oilfield and industrial chemicals in Saudi Arabia. Baker Hughes will own 51 % of the new joint venture while Dussur will own 49 %.

With an aim to expand the existing production capacity of its synthetic pharmaceutical CDMO business by 30 %, AGC has plans to invest 100 million dollars to develop a new facility in Spain for its subsidiary AGC Pharma Chemicals Europe. The new facility will focus on highly potent active pharmaceutical ingredients due to its high market demand.

With the new plant, Sumitomo Chemical plans to strengthen its supply of high-quality active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) and intermediates in the background of rising demand for small molecule drugs.

With growing demand for green hydrogen, Bosch has entered into a new area of business i.e. to develop electrolyzer components. The company plans to develop the core component of an electrolyzer – the stack and intends to invest up to 500 million euros in this new business.

Hengli Petrochemical started up the world's largest stand-alone pure terephthalic acid (PTA) production plant at the end of June. According to PROCESS China, the new PTA-5 plant has an annual capacity of 2.5 million tons and is ready to be the third new plant to be started up in China this year.

China’s GDP shrunk 6.8 % in the last quarter as compared with a year earlier. The country’s chemical manufacturing output declined by 21 % and profits by 66 % in the first two months of 2020 due to the coronavirus scenario. However, now with the virus defeated, the East Asian nation hopes to improve these figures.

The production capacity of crude oil in China's refineries climbed to a new record high in June. Analysts see this as a sign of the rapid recovery of the Chinese economy. However, market observers and Chinese officials see the current overcapacities and the corona crisis as increased pressure to reform the country's oil processing industry.

The restructuring of Korea Engineering Plastics, a joint venture of Celanese and Mitsubishi Gas Chemical, has successfully been carried out by the owners. Under the new change, the joint venture company will now only focus on manufacturing and supplying high quality polyoxymethylene products to its shareholders who will then market them around the world.

BASF has started up a new methane sulfonic acid (MSA) plant at its Verbund site in Ludwigshafen, Germany in the background of growing demand for MSA across the globe. The investment is expected to increase capacity at the site to a total of 50,000 metric tons annually.