A long holiday weekend in the U.S., celebrations to mark the end of Ramadan in many countries and very poor demand elsewhere has meant that little has been accomplished this week. U.S. Gulf As was to be expected, styrene has been the flavor of the week on routes to the Far East, with some 25,000-35,000 tons fixed over the past couple of weeks, with levels reported to be in the mid- to high $60s per metric ton to the Korea/Taiwan area, and low $70s/t to Mid China for 5,000-ton parcels. The action...

Canadas recent decision to remove amino methyl propanol from its list of volatile organic compounds – due to its negligible effect on formation of ground-level ozone – frees it up for use in that country in the formulation of low- and zero-VOC metalworking fluids. Canadas Department of the Environment last month finalized an order to exclude a variety of substances from the List of Toxic Substances in Schedule 1 of the Canadian Environmental Protection Act, 1999, including 2-amino-2-...

Lukoils output of base oils slumped 28.7 percent in 2015 and its sales of finished lubricants dipped 1.8 percent, according to its annual report, but the company claimed to have made progress on its strategy of focusing on higher-margin products instead of overall volumes. Lukoil kept working on increasing the share of high value-added products and streamlining low-margin segments, the company said in its 2015 report. Last year we succeeded to increase the sales of high-margin lubricants produce...

Several U.S. government agencies, including the Air Force, are testing the performance of biobased motor oils in non-tactical ground vehicles for possible conversion once these products are commercially available. The Department of Defense unveiled earlier this year that it is evaluating vegetable-based engine oils performance in select vehicles, noting that if biolubes stack up against conventional mineral oils, it would possibly require the oils to be purchased for use in its fleet of 200,000 ...

Axel Americas recently announced that it would cease operations at its manufacturing plant in North Kansas City, Missouri, moving grease production entirely to its newly expanded Rosedale, Mississippi, facility. The North Kansas City plant manufactured around 8 million pounds of grease annually at its peak, but it has been operating since 1929, so the company decided to move production to the modernized facility in Mississippi, said Tom Schroeder, president of Axel Americas. We recently made a s...

The expansion of lube manufacturer Chem-Trends European headquarters near Munich will provide facilities and logistics functions for it and fellow Freudenberg Chemical Specialties business units Klueber Lubrication Munich and OKS Specialty Lubricants. Chem-Trend and FCS recently broke ground for construction and expansion of Chem-Trends facilities outside Munich in Germany. Chem-Trends European headquarters, already located at the site in the Maisach Gernlinden area, will expand as part of the p...