The Indian pharmaceutical industry has realised the need for upgrading the skills of its employees in order to stay competitive in the global market scenario. Under the guidance of the government, various initiatives have been undertaken to educate the youth and make them skill ready for their jobs.

BASF plans to begin production of 1,4-butanediol based on renewable feedstock (renewable BDO) using the patented process of Genomatica, San Diego/California. The one-step fermentation process is based on sugars as a renewable feedstock.

The European 'Atex' Directives 94/9/EC and 999/92/EC exhibit a lack of differentiation between explosive gas mixtures and explosive dust clouds. Consequently, some very substantial differences between gases/vapours and dusts have either been neglected or addressed inadequately.

GE introduced a new ultrafiltration (UF) and reverse osmosis (RO) solution for water treatment in the production of beverages. According to the company, its integrated UF and RO technology is designed to process poor quality and challenging source water with optimal removal of particulates, microorganisms and total dissolved solids (TDS) while reducing the footprint and lowering costs.

Enviral has acquired a license to use Clariant's sunliquid technology as part of its goal to realize a full scale commercial cellulosic ethanol plant for the commercial production of cellulosic ethanol from agricultural residues.

Solvay announced that BASF agreed to acquire its Polyamides business for € 1.6 billion (approx. $ 1.92 billion).

Lanxess celebrates the opening of Asia's most modern butyl rubber plant as well as the companies biggest investment project ever. The German speciality chemicals specialists have invested around € 400 millions in the new 100.000 tons/year facility at Jurong Island...

Solvay plans to cut costs in Europe by € 100 million per year as of 2016 – plans that also include the closure of a plant in Portugal in restructuring measures at several other sites...

Akzo Nobel's Specialty Chemicals business has entered the next phase of a major expansion at its organic peroxides facility in Ningbo, China, which will increase production capacity by more than 100 % by the third quarter of 2018.

New technologies to treat water in refineries and petrochemical plants: Giving the right water treatment solution to refineries and petrochemical plants is a big challenge. Nalco has addressed this problem with a holistic cooling water management system.