Nouryon announced that it has chosen to rename its wholly-owned Industrial Chemicals business to Nobian. According to the company, this branding change will allow Nobian to develop its integrated European value chain for essential base chemicals under its own name and brand while Nouryon will continue to focus on growing its leading position in global speciality chemicals.

BASF is a founding member of a new global network dedicated to building a circular economy in the self-adhesive labelling industry. CELAB (Toward a Circular Economy for Labels) is a cross-industry coalition open to all companies in the self-adhesive label supply chain, promoting sustainability through encouraging collaboration, kick-starting regional initiatives, and developing best practices.

Huntsman Corporation announced that its Elastomers team has signed an agreement with Lintech International LLC, to distribute its polyurethane-based Daltocast hot cast elastomer systems in the Southern and Western regions of the USA.  Lintech has been distributing Huntsman’s coatings and adhesive systems and components for the past nine years.

AkzoNobel N.V. announced that it is set to increase its presence in the North American yacht coatings market after agreeing to acquire New Nautical Coatings, owner of the Sea Hawk yacht coatings brand. Financial details were not disclosed.

Bharat Sharma is KraussMaffei Group’s new head of the Asia-Pacific region, based in Singapore, from 1 January 2021. In this role, he will be responsible for both the New Machine Business and Digital + Service Solutions. Sharma will report to Nadine Despineux, Executive Vice President of the Digital + Service Solutions division of the KraussMaffei Group.

Continental strategically sharpens its profile as a provider of service and complete conveying solutions and therefore unifies its portfolio under the Continental brand. In the future, all products, technologies and services, know-how and expertise will be combined under the Continental brand.

Covestro’s family of partially bio-based thermoplastic polyurethanes (TPU) is now marketed under the name Desmopan EC.

Ceresana has published the fourth edition of its Market Study: Adhesives Europe in January 2021. In 2019, a total of around 3.51 million tonnes were utilized. The market researchers expect sales generated with adhesives across Europe to grow by 0.5 % per year until 2027.

Sinopec has awarded an engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) contract to Wood for an ethylene expansion in the Hainan Free Trade Zone in China. The contract, valued at over USD 120 million, is for an ethylene renovation and expansion project, which, once complete, will produce up to 1 million t/y of ethylene derivatives and refined oil to serve demand across China and globally. A schedule for the project was not given.

Wittmann Battenfeld has intensified the cooperation between its Sales and Application Engineering departments. To this end, special focal areas of application technology have been defined and appropriate reorganization measures taken. Six fields have been selected to receive special attention over the next two years: medical technology, micro injection molding, packaging technology, elastomer engineering, multi-component injection molding and light-weight design. Wolfgang Roth, Head of Application Engineering will be in charge of directing the product experts jointly with Valentina Faloci, Head of Sales.