The Spray Polyurethane Foam Alliance (SPFA) has announced its newly elected Board of Directors for 2018 – 2020. Encompassing industry leaders from both the contractor and manufacturer sides of the business, the 16-member Board includes an Executive Committee and 12 additional voting members.

Orion Engineered Carbons announced that it will implement price increases on all specialty carbon blacks worldwide, effective from on 1 September 2018.

Chandra Asri Perkasa (CAP), a subsidiary of Chandra Asri Petrochemical, has selected LyondellBasell's technologies for a new polyethylene (PE) plant and polypropylene (PP) unit being built as part of CAP's second petrochemical complex in Cilegon, Indonesia.

Sinopec Qilu Petrochemical Corp. is utilizing Haldor Topsoe's Catox catalyst for cost-efficient control of volatile organic compounds (VOC) at its styrene butadiene rubber (SBR) plant in Zibo, China.

Richard Hawkins, Knut Blind, Robert Page (eds.), Edward Elgar Publishing, Cheltenham, UK, 2017, 456 p., hardcover, GBP 140.00, ISBN 978-1-78347-007-5, ebook, eISBN 978-1-78347-008-2

The South Korean company Songwon announced that it has started to manufacture Songnox 5650 at its Panoli plant in Gujarat, India, ensuring global availability of the additive. The product is a high molecular weight, multifunctional phenolic antioxidant primarily used as a post-polymerisation process stabiliser for unsaturated elastomers. According to the company, phenolic antioxidants are effective, non-discolouring stabilisers for organic substrates that are prone to oxidation, including plastics, synthetic fibres, elastomers and waxes.

Following extensive experiments, lab testing, road testing and more, Goodyear has introduced soy-based technology in its Assurance WeatherReady tyres, a broad line tyre that covers 77 % of cars, SUVs, crossovers, pickups and minivans. The company will expand its line of tyres containing soy with the addition of Eagle Enforcer All Weather for police vehicles that count on high-performance traction and handling.

Arlanxeo will invest a mid double-digit million EUR amount to modernize its production sites for synthetic rubber in Triunfo, Brazil and La Wantzenau, France, over the next three years.

As measured by the global turnover, butadiene rubber (BR) is the second most important rubber after styrene-butadiene rubber (SBR). According to the most recent study by the market research institute Ceresana, worldwide consumption for this elastomer type amounts to about 3.44 million tonnes per year. The region Asia-Pacific accounted for over 57 % of global revenues, followed at a large distance by North America and Western Europe. Ceresana expects the revenues generated with BR to increase by, on average, 4.1 % per year until 2025.

Covestro plans to build its own chlorine production plant in Tarragona, Spain. With the so-called oxygen depolarized cathode (ODC) technology, a sustainable manufacturing process is to be used. In Tarragona, the company is building the first industrial-scale plant based solely on this technology. According to the company, Covestro is currently investing around EUR 200 million at Tarragona in order to increase the competitiveness of the location.