The Urethane Blog
June 25, 2020
Megafarma,an Azelis company,strengthens its presence for CASE in Mexico through distribution of BASF Monomers
19 June 2020
WESTPORT, CT and MEXICO CITY – Megafarma, an Azelis company, is delighted to announce that it has been authorized by BASF Monomers, a global leader in the development, production and sales of polyurethanes- to distribute their polyurethane raw materials in Mexico. The exclusive distribution agreement includes BASF’s lines of Lupranate® isocyanates and Pluracol® polyols. The agreement is effective immediately.
Highlights & rationale
- This new mandate further strengthens Azelis’ strategic acquisition of Megafarma earlier this year to expand into the Latin American CASE market.
- It leverages existing Azelis Americas CASE assets, including application labs, digital platforms, technical and market intelligence, in the Mexican market.
- The mandate is in line with Azelis’ corporate strategy of organic growth through the expansion of existing relationships with key principals into new territories.
Martin Hernandez Gutiérrez, Director General at Megafarma, an Azelis company, comments:
“Megafarma has been very successful in life sciences in Mexico and the merger with Azelis earlier this year brought us new opportunities and enabled us to enter new market segments. This new agreement with BASF is the latest example of our commitment to expand into Mexican CASE sector and become a leading distributor with unsurpassed quality, logistics and technical support for our customers and principals.”
Dan Gruber, Managing Director, New Business Development, Azelis Americas CASE, says:
“We have a longstanding relationship with BASF. In the U.S and Canada we have demonstrated organic growth via our dedicated and technically trained sales force, and our application labs have been instrumental in our joint success. We are very excited about this expansion into the Mexican market as it allows us to deliver the same value and growth that we have provided BASF Polyurethanes in the U.S and Canada.”
Rachel Miller, CASE Distribution, Monomers, North America, BASF Corporation, says:
“This collaboration with Megafarma will provide our CASE specialties customers in Mexico with the service and expertise our U.S. customers are accustomed to. Our portfolio of Lupranate® isocyanates and Pluracol® polyols can be formulated to create a variety of specialty products now in Mexico.”
Lucia Zamudio, CASE Sales Director, Megafarma, an Azelis company, adds:
“We have built a team of excellent, experienced technical sales representatives for the CASE market who are ready to pursue new business opportunities for BASF. This latest portfolio addition is complementary to our other new CASE mandates for Mexico. We have confidence that we will bring the same high quality of technical sales and service to the Mexican Urethane Market.”
June 25, 2020
Dow CFO sees additional $350M headwind to Q2 EBITDA
Jun. 24, 2020 6:57 PM ET|About: Dow Inc. (DOW)|By: Carl Surran, SA News Editor
Dow Inc. (DOW -7%) was today’s biggest loser on the Dow Jones index after President and CFO Howard Ungerleider said he expects “an additional $350M headwind” to total EBITDA in Q2 compared with current market expectations, primarily due to a delayed and slower recovery in the automotive, construction, appliance and furniture sectors.
In remarks today at the BMO Chemicals & Packaging Conference, Ungerleider said Dow saw gradual incremental gains in May from April to May with expectations for further revenue improvement in June, but the composition of sales by segment is a bit different than expected, driven by lower spending in consumer durables and big-ticket items.
The “sluggish Q2 recovery in durable consumer items has significantly impacted our Industrial Intermediates and Infrastructure operating segment… with polyurethanes having the greatest exposure to these end-markets. Going into Q2, we expected demand declines in our polyurethanes applications in the 15%-20% range.. but now believe it will be closer to the 25%-30% range,” the CFO said.
On a more upbeat note, Ungerleider found it “encouraging to see the pace of recovery beginning to accelerate in June in almost every value chain in our portfolio… Our order books and shipments for this month show that volume expectations continue to improve across all of our businesses.”
June 25, 2020
Dow CFO sees additional $350M headwind to Q2 EBITDA
Jun. 24, 2020 6:57 PM ET|About: Dow Inc. (DOW)|By: Carl Surran, SA News Editor
Dow Inc. (DOW -7%) was today’s biggest loser on the Dow Jones index after President and CFO Howard Ungerleider said he expects “an additional $350M headwind” to total EBITDA in Q2 compared with current market expectations, primarily due to a delayed and slower recovery in the automotive, construction, appliance and furniture sectors.
In remarks today at the BMO Chemicals & Packaging Conference, Ungerleider said Dow saw gradual incremental gains in May from April to May with expectations for further revenue improvement in June, but the composition of sales by segment is a bit different than expected, driven by lower spending in consumer durables and big-ticket items.
The “sluggish Q2 recovery in durable consumer items has significantly impacted our Industrial Intermediates and Infrastructure operating segment… with polyurethanes having the greatest exposure to these end-markets. Going into Q2, we expected demand declines in our polyurethanes applications in the 15%-20% range.. but now believe it will be closer to the 25%-30% range,” the CFO said.
On a more upbeat note, Ungerleider found it “encouraging to see the pace of recovery beginning to accelerate in June in almost every value chain in our portfolio… Our order books and shipments for this month show that volume expectations continue to improve across all of our businesses.”
June 24, 2020
Nothing to do with anything, but interesting . . .
Foam ‘spider webs’ from tiny satellites could help clean up space junk
By Mike Wall a day ago
The foam could even serve as a building material on Mars, if all goes according to plan.
A little foam-spewing spacecraft could make a big dent in the space-junk problem in the coming years.
The Russian startup StartRocket is developing a “Foam Debris Catcher,” a small, autonomous satellite that would snag and de-orbit space debris using sticky polymer foam.
“It’s like a spider web,” StartRocket founder Vlad Sitnikov told Space.com.
Earth orbit is cluttered with about 129 million pieces of debris, 34,000 of which are at least 4 inches (10 centimeters) wide, according to European Space Agency estimates. These objects are hurtling through space at tremendous speeds — 17,500 mph (28,200 km/h) in low-Earth orbit, for example — so even the tiny shards could seriously damage a satellite or spacecraft.
And the space-junk threat is rising, experts say, because we’re putting a lot more stuff into orbit than we used to — and the numbers are poised to go through the roof. Humanity has launched fewer than 10,000 satellites since the dawn of the space age in 1957. But SpaceX has secured permission to loft 12,000 craft just for its Starlink internet-satellite constellation and has applied for approval to launch up to 30,000 more.
A crowded orbital environment increases the risk of collisions. And just a few smashups involving satellites — be they operational or defunct — could spawn enormous new swarms of debris, potentially instigating a nightmare collision cascade known as the Kessler Syndrome.
If we don’t take action soon, Sitnikov said, “we will be in jail. We will be in a prison made by debris.”
StartRocket wants the barrel-shaped Foam Debris Catcher to help keep us out of jail. The 110-lb. (50 kilograms) satellite would extrude lattices of foam when it gets close to debris clouds, trapping lots of junk. Atmospheric drag would then work on the encased debris, sending it down to its death in Earth’s atmosphere.
StartRocket isn’t alone in developing debris-mitigation tech. For example, some groups are working on systems that would harpoon space junk or snare it using net-launching guns. And others have devised friction-increasing “drag sails” that satellites could deploy near the ends of their lives, ensuring speedy destruction.
StartRocket has made progress on the foam but still needs to finalize the formula, said project leader Aleksei Fedorov, a chemical engineer.
Nailing down the formula and testing it here on Earth is the first big milestone for the company to meet, Sitnikov and Fedorov said. The second milestone, targeted for 2022, is the launch of a cubesat that will extrude a test sample in Earth orbit, to make sure that the foam behaves as planned in the space environment. If that goes well, StartRocket will work toward lofting its first functional Foam Debris Catcher, potentially as early as 2023.
Development work in these early stages has been supported by Kaspersky, a Russian cybersecurity company owned by billionaire Eugene Kaspersky.
“The solution being developed by StartRocket is an interesting example of how technology is changing and can be used to reduce space debris,” Andrew Winton, vice president of marketing at Kaspersky, said in a statement. “We will watch the company’s development and product progression with great interest and look forward to supporting the cause in the coming years.”
But StartRocket — which made news in 2018 for a controversial plan, now on hold, to create advertisements in space using formation-flying satellites — is also looking to the masses to help fund the space-junk project going forward.
“We believe in the people — we’re going to ask people to give us money,” Sitnikov told Forbes. “It’s like Greenpeace — maybe we’ll be the second Greenpeace!”
The sticky-foam tech could also find uses far beyond Earth orbit, if everything goes according to plan. For example, Fedorov and Sitnikov envision the stuff, or something like it, eventually being employed as a cheap and efficient building material on Mars.
A barrel could be sent to the Martian surface instead of huge metallic habitats. The barrel would expel a big half-sphere of foam, and “astronauts can use just a knife to make the building, the habitat,” Sitnikov said.
- Space junk explained: How orbital debris threatens future of spaceflight (infographic)
- This space junk removal experiment will harpoon & net debris in orbit
- Latest news about space junk and orbital debris
Mike Wall is the author of “Out There” (Grand Central Publishing, 2018; illustrated by Karl Tate), a book about the search for alien life. Follow him on Twitter @michaeldwall. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom or Facebook.
June 24, 2020
Nothing to do with anything, but interesting . . .
Foam ‘spider webs’ from tiny satellites could help clean up space junk
By Mike Wall a day ago
The foam could even serve as a building material on Mars, if all goes according to plan.
A little foam-spewing spacecraft could make a big dent in the space-junk problem in the coming years.
The Russian startup StartRocket is developing a “Foam Debris Catcher,” a small, autonomous satellite that would snag and de-orbit space debris using sticky polymer foam.
“It’s like a spider web,” StartRocket founder Vlad Sitnikov told Space.com.
Earth orbit is cluttered with about 129 million pieces of debris, 34,000 of which are at least 4 inches (10 centimeters) wide, according to European Space Agency estimates. These objects are hurtling through space at tremendous speeds — 17,500 mph (28,200 km/h) in low-Earth orbit, for example — so even the tiny shards could seriously damage a satellite or spacecraft.
And the space-junk threat is rising, experts say, because we’re putting a lot more stuff into orbit than we used to — and the numbers are poised to go through the roof. Humanity has launched fewer than 10,000 satellites since the dawn of the space age in 1957. But SpaceX has secured permission to loft 12,000 craft just for its Starlink internet-satellite constellation and has applied for approval to launch up to 30,000 more.
A crowded orbital environment increases the risk of collisions. And just a few smashups involving satellites — be they operational or defunct — could spawn enormous new swarms of debris, potentially instigating a nightmare collision cascade known as the Kessler Syndrome.
If we don’t take action soon, Sitnikov said, “we will be in jail. We will be in a prison made by debris.”
StartRocket wants the barrel-shaped Foam Debris Catcher to help keep us out of jail. The 110-lb. (50 kilograms) satellite would extrude lattices of foam when it gets close to debris clouds, trapping lots of junk. Atmospheric drag would then work on the encased debris, sending it down to its death in Earth’s atmosphere.
StartRocket isn’t alone in developing debris-mitigation tech. For example, some groups are working on systems that would harpoon space junk or snare it using net-launching guns. And others have devised friction-increasing “drag sails” that satellites could deploy near the ends of their lives, ensuring speedy destruction.
StartRocket has made progress on the foam but still needs to finalize the formula, said project leader Aleksei Fedorov, a chemical engineer.
Nailing down the formula and testing it here on Earth is the first big milestone for the company to meet, Sitnikov and Fedorov said. The second milestone, targeted for 2022, is the launch of a cubesat that will extrude a test sample in Earth orbit, to make sure that the foam behaves as planned in the space environment. If that goes well, StartRocket will work toward lofting its first functional Foam Debris Catcher, potentially as early as 2023.
Development work in these early stages has been supported by Kaspersky, a Russian cybersecurity company owned by billionaire Eugene Kaspersky.
“The solution being developed by StartRocket is an interesting example of how technology is changing and can be used to reduce space debris,” Andrew Winton, vice president of marketing at Kaspersky, said in a statement. “We will watch the company’s development and product progression with great interest and look forward to supporting the cause in the coming years.”
But StartRocket — which made news in 2018 for a controversial plan, now on hold, to create advertisements in space using formation-flying satellites — is also looking to the masses to help fund the space-junk project going forward.
“We believe in the people — we’re going to ask people to give us money,” Sitnikov told Forbes. “It’s like Greenpeace — maybe we’ll be the second Greenpeace!”
The sticky-foam tech could also find uses far beyond Earth orbit, if everything goes according to plan. For example, Fedorov and Sitnikov envision the stuff, or something like it, eventually being employed as a cheap and efficient building material on Mars.
A barrel could be sent to the Martian surface instead of huge metallic habitats. The barrel would expel a big half-sphere of foam, and “astronauts can use just a knife to make the building, the habitat,” Sitnikov said.
- Space junk explained: How orbital debris threatens future of spaceflight (infographic)
- This space junk removal experiment will harpoon & net debris in orbit
- Latest news about space junk and orbital debris
Mike Wall is the author of “Out There” (Grand Central Publishing, 2018; illustrated by Karl Tate), a book about the search for alien life. Follow him on Twitter @michaeldwall. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom or Facebook.
Everchem Updates Archive 
Sign Up for Email Updates