May 19, 2024

Tosoh Raising MDI Price

Tosoh to Increase Prices for Millionate MDI Grades

Tosoh Specialty Chemicals USA, Inc. is increasing its prices for Millionate MDI Grades in North America. Effective with deliveries on or after June 1, 2024, or as contract terms allow, TSCU will increase the prices of Millionate MDI grades by $0.25/kg.

Millionate MDI is widely used in the production of rigid, semi-rigid, and integral skin foams, as well as coatings, adhesives, and elastomers.

TOSOH CORPORATION

Tosoh Corporation is the parent company of a Japanese chemical and specialty products and materials group that comprises over 100 companies worldwide and a multiethnic workforce of more than 12,000 people.
The parent company was established in 1935 and is listed on the First Section of the Tokyo Stock Exchange. In the 80 years that we have been in business, we have built balanced product lines of commodity chemicals for industry and of specialty products and materials for high technology and niche markets.

Tosoh’s principal markets include the chemical and petrochemical, construction, automotive, consumer electronics, information technology, bioscience, and environmental markets.

May 15, 2024

F. Quinn Stepan

Birth: October 24th, 1937

Death: May 13th, 2024

F. Quinn Stepan OBITUARY

The world lost an extraordinary man on May 13, 2024. F. Quinn Stepan died peacefully in his home of 60 years.

The beloved husband of the late Jean “Snowy” Stepan (nee Finn) and devoted son of the late Alfred Charles and Mary Louise Stepan lived his life for others. Quinn Stepan had many passions, his first was his love for his wife, Snowy. They were married for 63 years and raised eight children.

He was the loving father of Jeanne (Rob) Schoder, Quinn (Debbie) Stepan Jr., Jennifer (Jim) Beqaj, Lisa (Tim) Hackett, Colleen (Jay) Tulimieri, Alfred (Candice) Stepan and Richard (Heather) Stepan and the late Todd Stepan. Cherished grandfather of Theresa (Joe) Stepan Dumais, Meghann (John) Stepan Kelly, Quinn P. Stepan, Robby (Taylor) Schoder, Mari Schoder, Scott (Mary) Schoder, Charlie Schoder and the late Michael Schoder, Jack, Sam, and Sarah Beqaj, Grace, Francie, Timmy, and Johnny Hackett, Quinn, Jeanne, Libby, and Jack Tulimieri, Spencer Stepan, and Haley, Finn, and Brenna Stepan. He also was blessed to be the fond great grandfather of Olivia, Hudson and Miles Schoder, Faye and Scott Schoder, Colin, Katelyn, Lilly and Andrew Dumais, Mac, Step, Walt and Rhetta Kelly, and Quinn H. Stepan.

Quinn Stepan was born in 1937 in the middle of an economic recession, the tough times would influence his lifestyle choices. He was the third child of Alfred and Mary Louise. He was a proud member of the Winnetka Stepan family with four brothers and two sisters. He grew-up on the Village Green, sitting on the cannon, running in the Fourth of July races and swimming in Maple Street Beach.

Quinn and Snowy Stepan hosted the extended family for the Turkey Bowl and Thanksgiving for more than 100 people, for four decades. Traditions were important to Quinn, he believed that gatherings created the opportunity to build connections and strengthen bonds between people. Quinn was the dear brother of Stratford (Judy) Stepan, Charlotte (Jim) Stepan Shea and John (Bonnie) Stepan and Brother-in-law to Richard Wehman and sister-in-law to Nancy Leys Stepan. His sister Marilee Stepan Wehman and sister-in-law Ann Ruppe Stepan, brothers Alfred Stepan and Paul Stepan predeceased him.

Quinn attended Faith, Hope and Charity, Loyola Academy, and then the University of Notre Dame. He cultivated life long friendships across each of these institutions. After Notre Dame, he served in the Army and moved with his young family to Michigan, Texas and New Jersey. Eventually they found their way back to Winnetka, earning an MBA at the University of Chicago, residing in the shadow of Faith Hope for the last 60 years.

He loved Winnetka and Lake Michigan. Quinn never forgot the foundation of his Catholic education and he firmly believed in its importance. He would serve as the Chairman of the Board for both Loyola Academy and Woodlands Academy. He spent decades on the Notre Dame Liberal Art Council and was an ardent supporter of Big Shoulders and the Stepan Scholars program at the Our Lady of Grace parochial school. He believed Catholic education was important to build people of good character and sound mind. He definitely valued a liberal arts background, he said it was important for students to develop their thinking and writing skills. He funded the Stepan Economic Chair at Notre Dame to coax the best professors to stay in the College of Arts & Letters instead of decamping to the Business Schools.

He shared his leadership and management skills tirelessly to help these institutions flourish.

Quinn Stepan will also be remembered for the company he lead. His Team took the company his father founded in 1932 and made it a global powerhouse. When Quinn joined Stepan Company in 1961, net sales were $17.3 million and net income was $1.3 million with 3 domestic industrial plants. Today, it is a global company with 22 plants in 12 countries with 2 billion dollars in sales that employs more than 2400 people.

He loved going to work everyday at Stepan. He built a culture of idea sharing, congeniality and excellence. He ate lunch in the company cafeteria so he could visit with the troops. He was recognized as an industry leader and was honored with the Elva Walker Spillane Distinguished Service Award in 2010.

Family will always be the greatest legacy of Quinn Stepan. His family was his top priority. He loved everyone, he cared deeply about their well-being, their education, their futures and their passions. He was the catalyst for incredible family events – holiday celebrations, travel escapades that included European and American driving tours, Mediterranean boat cruises, golf outings, ski trips, Olympic experiences, African safaris, early trips to India and China. He wanted to share the joys of travel with others and wanted to create a wonder for the vastness of the world.

He chronicled all these good times – the games he attended, the beautiful places visited, graduations, baptisms etc.… It was not uncommon for relatives to be jockeying for position on his photo shelves. He loved his photos and being surrounded by the smiles and love of the family he had built. He was dedicated, steadfast and resolute. We knew that we always had a cheerleader in our corner. It is these memories that will provide comfort. He will be deeply missed by his family, friends and colleagues. Hopefully, all can take the lessons of Quinn’s well lived life and move forward to be the catalyst for change to make our world a little better.

Visitation Thursday, May 16, 2024, 10:00 a.m. CDT at Saints Faith, Hope & Charity Church, 191 Linden Street, Winnetka, IL 60093, it will immediately be followed by a 11:00 a.m. Funeral Mass. To virtually attend the funeral Mass, visit F. Quinn Stepan’s obituary page on donnellanfuneral.com to access the link to the live streaming. The family invites you to a reception immediately following Mass in the Saints Faith Hope & Charity Parish Hall. Interment private All Saints Cemetery, Des Plaines, IL. In lieu of flowers, memorials may be made to either: Big Shoulders Fund. Info: donnellanfuneral.com or 847-675-1990

May 13, 2024

Wind Turbine Issues

Thousands of Old Wind Turbine Blades Pile Up in West Texas

Officials in Sweetwater say an out-of-state company has made their town a dump for the seldom-seen trash created by renewable energy.

Discarded wind turbine blades fill thirty acres on the west side of Sweetwater.

Update, May 6, 2024: Despite earlier assurances from Global Fiberglass Solutions that they would be removed with months, the blades remain in Sweetwater.

Update, September 25: General Electric filed a lawsuit last week claiming that Global Fiberglass Solutions has failed to fulfill its promise to recycle thousands of blades. GE says it paid the company $16.9 million to recycle about five thousand wind turbine blades, but that GFS instead stockpiled them at facilities in Sweetwater and Iowa. “Only after GFS took millions of dollars from GE, did GFS all but shut down its operations without recycling the Blades,” reads the complaint, filed in U.S. district court in New York.

GE says it later contracted with another company to recycle its blades and is seeking damages to cover these costs as well as reputational damage. Global Fiberglass has not responded to the lawsuit. GE removing its blades from Sweetwater wouldn’t clean up the giant dump; blades manufactured by other companies would still remain.

Every year since 1958, the West Texas town of Sweetwater has hosted the World’s Largest Rattlesnake Roundup, which is exactly what it sounds like. Thousands of the venomous ophidians are rooted out of their dens and brought to the Nolan County Coliseum to be gawked at, “milked,” and often beheaded and skinned. It started as a way for the region to rid itself of some of its least-welcome residents. Now community leaders wish they could do the same with several giant piles of scrap that have for too long been left to bake in the sun. But that’s proving to be much trickier than wrangling reptiles.

About forty miles west of Abilene on Interstate 20, Sweetwater has unwittingly become home to what is possibly the world’s largest collection of unwanted wind turbine blades. When forklifts deposited the first of these in a field behind the apartment complex where Pamala Meyer lives, on the west side of town, in 2017, she wasn’t initially bothered. But then the blades—between 150 and 200 feet in length and mostly made of composite materials such as fiberglass with a binding resin—kept coming. Each was cut into thirds, with each segment longer than a school bus. Thousands arrived over several years, eventually blanketing more than thirty acres, in stacks rising as high as basketball backboards. Every few dozen feet, a break among the stacks leads into an industrial hedge maze.

“It’s just a hazard all the way around,” Meyer said. She worries about neighborhood children exploring the unfenced piles and says that stagnant pools of water inside the blades breed swarms of mosquitos. Matt Jackson, who works in a nearby warehouse, has other concerns. The piles create shaded nooks and crannies, perfect for Sweetwater’s unofficial mascot. “It’s just a big rattlesnake farm,” he said.

The blades were brought here by Global Fiberglass Solutions, a company based in Washington State that announced in 2017 its intention to recycle blades from wind farms across the region. Instead of ending up in landfills, they would be ground up into a reusable material that could be turned into pallets, railroad ties, or flooring panels. Global Fiberglass is one of a few companies attempting to develop a viable business from recycling blades.

Besides the main boneyard—behind Meyer’s apartment—stacks of blades also occupy ten acres a couple miles south of town, and the company is storing blades in other locations in the county. “They have, in my view, abandoned them there,” said Samantha Morrow, the Nolan County attorney. “The county doesn’t have and cannot find millions of dollars to clean this up.”

The Sweetwater piles are also at least partly the indirect result of a rule clarification the Internal Revenue Service issued in 2016. Before then, a wind farm could collect valuable federal tax credits for only its first ten years of operation. But the IRS determined that it would restart the clock on the credits if a wind farm “repowered” its turbines—replacing most of their equipment with newer parts. So, despite the expected two-decade lifespan for turbine blades, wind farms across Texas and other states began replacing many that remained in good shape years early.

Some paid Global Fiberglass to remove the older blades and haul them away. The company set up shop in an empty industrial facility in Sweetwater that was once an aluminum recycling plant, but Don Lilly, the managing director of Global Fiberglass, told me that only a handful of blades have ever been ground up there. He said the company was close to ramping up and would soon mill the blades into pieces the size of coarse sand. “The blade material is sold,” he said, “but I can’t go into that part yet.”

Sweetwater has heard such pledges before. The county declared the stockpile a public nuisance a year ago. City attorney Jeff Allen said Sweetwater’s local ordinances are aimed at overgrown lots, not turbine blades, leaving the city with limited legal options. He said he believes Global Fiberglass “intended to be a viable business” but at some point “it just came off the rails.” (Lilly disputes this and says the delays have come from ensuring “all systems were engineered.”)

Sweetwater benefits from the wind-energy industry, including two large wind farms nearby. Drivers arriving on I-20 from either direction are welcomed by a giant wind turbine blade painted with the town’s name. But even the community’s biggest boosters of renewable energy long ago ran out of patience with Global Fiberglass’s mess. “We’d like to see them gone,” said Karen Hunt, director of the local chamber of commerce. “The sooner the better.”

Sweetwater isn’t the only place Global Fiberglass has stockpiled blades. It has a total of 1,300 in Newton, Iowa, and two other cities in that state, according to the state’s Department of Natural Resources. After an investigation, the agency concluded in 2021 there was no recycling going on, nor was any likely to happen. It declared the company to be running an unpermitted dump.

Frank Liebl, executive director of the Newton Development Corporation, testified at a state hearing that the initial excitement in 2017 of recruiting a blade-recycling company soon soured. In the intervening years, he asked Global Fiberglass many times when it would begin its recycling. He always got “the same answer: ‘Soon,’ ” he said.

By July 2021, the company owed more than $1 million in unpaid rent in Newton, according to testimony at the Iowa hearing from its landlord’s attorney. In Texas, it failed to pay taxes to Nolan County in 2020 and is now three years in arrears, according to tax records. Last year, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality fined the company $10,255 for what it described as illegally stored solid waste. It allowed the company to pay the penalty in monthly installments for three years. In June, Global Fiberglass defaulted, according to the commission.

In Newton, pressure from the state of Iowa seems to have worked. Craig Armstrong, a city employee, said that General Electric recently acquired the blades. It’s unclear whether GE purchased them from Global Fiberglass or from the landlord who was owed the $1 million in rent, who may have taken possession of the blades. The city was promised that they would be sent to a recycling center by the end of the year, although none had been removed by mid-August, according to a Newton city official.

Lilly declined to talk about the Iowa blades. He said the situation in Sweetwater is different and insists that Global Fiberglass will grind down and recycle these blades. “If you come back nine months from now, you will not see the material,” he said. We’re marking our calendars and will check back in May.

https://www.texasmonthly.com/news-politics/sweetwater-wind-turbine-blades-dump/

May 12, 2024

CVC Buys Into Hempel

Private equity CVC Funds buys into Hempel

Photo: Hempel

CVC Funds is becoming a minority investor in the coatings company which has been solely owned by Hempel Foundation for 75 years.

Marcus Hand | May 08, 2024

The move by Hempel Foundation to bring CVC in as an investor into Hempel A/S is designed to help support both its organic growth strategy and to pursue merger and acquisition opportunities.

CVC will as a minority investor subscribe to new shares equating to up to a 30% stake in Hempel over time. The value of the investment was not revealed.

Related: Hempel launches underwater hull inspections using ROVs

Richard Sand, Chair of the Hempel Foundation Board of Directors said that they believed the value of Hempel’s shares would increase more over the next five to 10 years with CVC as a minority shareholder than without.

“The Hempel Foundation has been the sole owner of Hempel for 75 years and has an ongoing commitment to secure Hempel’s financial base and ensure its future growth. After careful consideration, the Hempel Foundation has decided to welcome a minority investor that brings both unique experience and capital to support Hempel’s accelerated growth journey,” he stated.

Related: Hempel invests $100m in new China factory

Hempel Foundation will continue to be the majority shareholder in Hempel.

Michael Hansen, Group President and CEO of Hempel A/S said, “We have already made solid progress on our strategy of driving profitable growth, both organically and inorganically through M&A activity, delivering record-breaking results in 2023.

“This new partnership will considerably strengthen our industry position, will ignite further growth in our winning brands and means we are well-placed to seek out transformative acquisition opportunities.”

From the CVC side, Partner Michael Lavrysen, commented: “CVC Strategic Opportunities invests in high-quality businesses with longer growth horizons, often partnering with likeminded families and foundations looking for specific expertise to advance expansion.”

The transaction is expected to close in the second half of the year subject to regulatory approval.

https://www.seatrade-maritime.com/finance-insurance/private-equity-cvc-funds-buys-hempel

May 8, 2024

LyondellBasell Weighs Options

LyondellBasell Weighs Strategic Options for European Assets

HOUSTON and LONDON, May 8, 2024 /PRNewswire/ — LyondellBasell today announced the formal launch of a strategic review of the European assets of its Olefins & Polyolefins and Intermediates & Derivatives business units. The assessment will evaluate the assets through the lens of the company’s strategy to Grow & Upgrade the Core, Build a Profitable Circular and Low Carbon Solutions Business, and Step Up Performance & Culture.

“At the 2023 Capital Markets Day, we stated our intent to concentrate our portfolio around businesses with long-lasting competitive advantage and to reinvest around those advantaged areas generating superior returns at meaningful scale,” said Peter Vanacker, LyondellBasell chief executive officer. “These criteria have not changed.”

The company’s investments in a commercial-scale MoReTec plant, LyondellBasell’s proprietary technology to convert plastic waste into liquid raw materials, and the development of a circularity hub in the Cologne, Germany region will continue as planned. LyondellBasell will also continue to invest and leverage its differential technology position as a key enabler to grow and upgrade the core asset base.

“The company will prioritize its investments to align operations with our circularity and net zero ambitions,” Vanacker added. “We understand that strategic assessments can create uncertainty for our employees and customers, but we are committed to operate our assets safely and reliably throughout this process.”

Media Inquiries
LyondellBasell Media Relations
Phone: +1 713 309 4791
Email: mediarelations@lyondellbasell.com

Or:
Robert Kleissen, External Affairs Europe
Phone: +31 6 273 573 98
Email: robert.kleissen@lyondellbasell.com

About LyondellBasell 
We are LyondellBasell (NYSE: LYB) ― a leader in the global chemical industry creating solutions for everyday sustainable living. Through advanced technology and focused investments, we are enabling a circular and low carbon economy. Across all we do, we aim to unlock value for our customers, investors and society. As one of the world’s largest producers of polymers and a leader in polyolefin technologies, we develop, manufacture and market high-quality and innovative products for applications ranging from sustainable transportation and food safety to clean water and quality healthcare. For more information, please visit www.lyondellbasell.com or follow @LyondellBasell on LinkedIn.

https://lyondellbasell.mediaroom.com/index.php?s=43&item=1487