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.

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.

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.

The General Directorate of Rubber under the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries and World Wide Fund for Nature-Cambodia (WWF-Cambodia) have announced their cooperation to build a multilateral partnership for transparent and sustainable natural rubber supply chains in the Kingdom. WWF-Cambodia country director Seng Teak and rubber directorate director-general Pol Sopha signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) on 12 January 2021.

Levi Cottington, Managing Director of CHT USA Inc. has taken over the management of the global business field General Industries of the CHT Group as of 1 October 2020. In his new function, Cottington combines both tasks. He reports directly to CHT Group management. His predecessor Dr. Ralf Brückmann has ended his active role as Head of BF General Industries on 31 December 2020 after 21 years with the company. Since joining the company on 1 October 1999, Dr. Brückmann has held major roles throughout the company. The success of the business field General Industries is largely due to his work and expertise, the company said.

Celanese announced it will build a new world-scale, multiphase liquid crystal polymer (LCP) polymerization facility at either an existing or greenfield site in China. The plant is anticipated to have an LCP production capacity of around 20,000 t/y, with the first phase of the project expected to come online in 2024.

Endurica LLC has received the 2020 United States Small Business Administration (SBA) Tibbetts Award which recognises companies that best exemplify the spirit and intent of the SBA’s Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) programme. Since 1982 this programme has been supporting the most innovative research entrepreneurs in science, engineering and technology start, grow and transition into high-growth companies.