BPA Baby Bottle Ban

ExxonMobil Chemical’s affiliate ExxonMobil Yugen Kaisha has announced that Japan’s Butyl Co. Ltd. will increase its butyl rubber production capacity by 18,000 tons/year at its Kawasaki Plant. This expansion will increase capacity to 98,000 tons/year when the project is completed in late 2010. The expansion will incorporate some of ExxonMobil’s recent advances in process technology.

Short-Time Work

BASF SE is introducing short-time work in the coming months for about 1,000 employees in 20 production plants and associated service units at its site in Ludwigshafen. These measures will be undertaken mainly at production units for pigments, intermediates, petrochemicals and inorganics. Most of the 1,000 employees will start working short time in June and July; a smaller number will follow in August and September. The number of hours worked will be reduced by between 20 to 100 percent and for up to four months according to the circumstances at the individual plants. Irrespective of the reduction in working hours, employees will receive a net wage of approximately 90 percent as a result of short-time work compensation provided by the German government as well as a payment from the company under the terms of the collective wage agreement for the chemical industry. Rapid reintroduction of normal working hours is possible at any time, pending a pickup in demand.

Framework Deal

Neste Jacobs has signed a long-term framework agreement with Abu Dhabi National Chemicals Company (ChemaWEyaat) covering engineering services for construction of one of the world’s largest chemicals industrial cities. The first complex to be built in the ChemaWEyaat Industrial City in the Kahlifa Industrial Zone at Taweelah in Abu Dhabi will include an ethylene cracker, a reformer and various polymer and chemicals processing units. ChemaWEyaat is planning to build a number of smaller complexes as well. Under the framework agreement, Neste Jacobs could be commissioned to carry out signification front-end engineering work.