Category Archives: Uncategorized

Surfactants Monthly – July 2023

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It’s a hot blog summer and we are unashamed about it. While our peers in publishing, like The Economist, are putting out a summer double issue (ie skipping an edition), we’re grinding it out in the hot humid months, giving you supreme value for your subscription dollars. So, we have the news then music, followed by personal notes. The News As always, credit for almost all our news goes to my partners, the great ICIS. I’m a long-time subscriber. Why not you? The news theme for this week is uptick (price wise not necessarily sales or volume-wise.) Not sure why or what this means but it’s there. Finally a rebound in Asia prices as ICIS great Helen Yan reports that the Asia fatty alcohols ethoxylates (FAE) market continues to face tightened supply and escalating cost of feedstock fatty alcohol mid-cuts C12-14. Aug-Sept plant turnarounds tighten supply Feedstock C12-14 mid-cuts fatty alcohols spot prices surging since mid-June China stimulus measures to boost regional demand On 3 August, FAE mols 7,9 spot prices were assessed at $1,450/tonne CIF (cost, insurance & freight) SE (southeast) Asia, up $25/tonne from the previous week, ICIS data showed.  A regional 85,000 tonne/year FAE plant is scheduled…

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Surfactants Monthly – March 2023

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March (and early April) 2023 We’ve got some great news as reported from AFPM in San Antonio, by ICIS, this month. Also – your last chance to register for the May surfactant super-conference in Jersey City. I want to induce some serious FOMO here. If you’re not there, you’ll be missing out big time. So: Register Here. And the music this month is inspired partly by the season and partly by what I listen to while penning these pages. I’m not sure what to make of it either, but there it is – at the end of the blog. If you’re motivated to go down a YouTube rabbit hole after listening to one of these selections, then great. I recommend it. The News: Not sure how much importance to place on this, but -OQ Chemicals has launched the first commercially available isononanoic acid made from both bio-based and circular feedstocks, the producer announced.  The new product has over 70% bio-based content, providing manufacturers with a sustainable alternative to conventional isononanoic acid to meet growing demand for carboxylic acids.  OQ Chemicals recently invested in capacity expansion for its carboxylic acids production in Germany and aims to make its large-scale production processes…

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Surfactants Monthly January 2023

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Greetings from Orlando. It’s good to see the ACI annual meeting back to full strength this year and to catch up with old friends and meet some new folks too. As usual, we don’t report hearsay and tittle-tattle here on the blog. All’s we have here in the news section is what is already in the public domain, usually reported by my friends and partners at ICIS. If you really want to hear the latest ACI gossip, then go the meeting. As I always, say – you gotta be there! . One thing I did pick up this week, is that we have a lot of new readers of the blog. Welcome! We do music here also. It’s usually at the end and so you can skip it if you like. But you shouldn’t. The musical choices of this blog have been rated as impeccable by an independent global panel of experts, which I quickly assembled in Orlando over the past few days. Now you know. The other thing you should know as a new reader is that I relentlessly, but transparently, shill for my other interests here. One such interest is the upcoming World Surfactant Conference coming up, May…

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Surfactants Monthly – December 2022

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Happy New Year my dear readers. We have the month’s news and some end of year music picks. This month’s promised fiction will come to you via a link at the end of the blog to a site I like which is publishing some interesting short stories. Now – straight into the news, which, as always, comes to us courtesy of our good friends at ICIS. Of course, I can’t kick off the year without mentioning that the 13th World Surfactants Conference, will again be held in Jersey City at the Hyatt on May 4th and 5th. Register here https://events.icis.com/website/8544/ OK – now the news. ICIS has published some good end of year summaries and I’ll excerpt some of the surfactant relevant ones here. First up, according to ICIS the European fatty alcohols market is rather subdued looking ahead to 2023.  Supply is widely available, while downstream demand from the ethoxylates market is weak for the first quarter.  “Ethoxylates demand is very poor […] It’s clear the demand is a strong reduction,” said a producer. Feedstocks have also trended downwards in recent months. Supply, demand and palm kernel oil (PKO) costs are the main factors discussed in Q1 contract negotiations….

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Surfactants Monthly – November 2022

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It’s strictly business this month, with little time for music or general chit- chat. We’re saving that all for next month with a short story and some musical exploration – maybe combined, let’s see. The news is also somewhat slim. Nothing to read into that, really, just natural variation, I think. So now – straight to the News, which as usual is largely courtesy of our good friends at ICIS. Encouraging news out of Louisiana as Sasol reported that it expects to complete repair work at its Ziegler alcohol unit at Lake Charles, Louisiana, by the end of the first quarter of 2023, subject to delivery of equipment. The plant was damaged in a fire on 15 October. Sasol was able to restart alcohol production at 50% utilisation during November, while isolating the damaged section for repairs, it said. The timeline to resuming full production rates depends on completion of the repair work. The fire’s impact on production prompted Sasol to declare force majeure on supply of US Ziegler alcohols and derivative products in October. The force majeure will be lifted as soon as production rates and inventory levels improve, the company said. Meanwhile in Asia, the alcohol ethoxylate picture continues to…

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Surfactants Monthly – September 2022

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Surfactants Monthly  –  September 2022 This month’s blog is one which chronicles, almost uniformly, a downward trend in pricing. This you may cheer you or not, depending on your perspective. There is no doubt that supply chain tightness is loosening and that is a good thing. Prices will find their own level in the coming months. I recently paid, through gritted teeth, an invoice on which was listed a “supply chain surcharge”. Take it off already! It’s annoying. The roller-coaster has surely turned. We’ll jump straight into the news now and, if we have time, maybe get into some music at the end. As always, a big shoutout and thanks to my friends and colleagues at ICIS for the news. I subscribe and you should too. At the end of the month and, as I think we predicted in last month’s blog, September US ethylene oxide (EO) contracts were assessed at 64.55 cents/lb ($1,423.07/tonne) The decrease in EO contract prices was due to a decrease in October ethylene contract prices. The supply of EO remains tight following a planned maintenance on a Seadrift, Texas plant, however, the market is expected to balance in Q4. Meanwhile in Europe European ethylene oxide…

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Surfactants Monthly – January 2022

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Surfactants Monthly – January 2022 Back In Person Like many others in our industry, I’ll be marking the end of the pandemic and the beginning of the endemic with a trip to Florida and the American Cleaning Institute Meeting. That may or may not be wishful thinking. Not the going to Florida part. That will have happened as of your reading this. The endemic part. That’s when you stop writing and talking about it except in the historical sense – like “hey do you remember that.. can you believe we were doing … such and such”. Let’s see. By the way, you’ll get no gossip or tittle-tattle from the ACI in this blog. Our motto is, as you know, that “you gotta be there”.  So.. Another place you gotta be is our great ICIS / Neil A Burns LLC World Surfactant Conference, which is back in person in Jersey City, NJ May 9 – 11th. It’s 1.5 day conference and a 1 day optional course. Of course, we also have the great Surfactants Awards for which nominations are now open. After two years of, frankly, unsatisfying meetings over zoom and somewhat nervous get-togethers at various meetings, I am really looking…

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Surfactants Monthly New Year 2022

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December 2021 / New Year – Monthly Surfactants Happy New Year As promised, we have here our monthly blog for the remaining part of December and an end of year short story. The story is set on New Year’s Eve and starts in the control room of a specialty chemical plant. If you don’t want to be bothered with the story and associated moralizing, you can skip straight to the news section which is clearly marked. OK? So here we go then… Oh and by the way, the story is fiction. It’s not based on any real events or places. Although – you may recognize some characters, thoughts and feelings from your own life. Alright here we go… The Story Emerald – A New Year’s Eve Short Story John gazed at the pale green screen. It yielded nothing of interest. Nothing at all really. No phones. No books or magazines even, allowed in the plant control room at Veritas Chemical, ever. Not even New Year’s Eve, when basically nothing was happening. Well, nothing that the control room cared about. There was some last-minute shipment being drummed off out there for a customer in Thailand or Taiwan or someplace round the…

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Surfactants Monthly – June 2021

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Surfactants Monthly – June 2021 Huge month for news, again. Lots happening with Oxiteno, Indorama, BASF, Colonial Chemical, Stepan, Amyris, M&A and much more. Before we get to that – this: Heads-up! This is to all the renewable and sustainable brands out there. Kylie Jenner is coming to your party and your life won’t be the same again. Regular readers of the blog know of my fascination with the Kardashians and know also that it is not born of prurient interest. Their influence on the culture and therefore our business is significant. Back in May of this year, Kylie Cosmetics swept its Instagram completely clean and posted a single photo of Kylie Jenner with the caption, “something is coming,” After two months of waiting, Jenner finally, on July 1st, revealed what she’s been working on with her billion-dollar brand. From here on, we’re quoting the IG post “The new @kyliecosmetics is coming JULY 15, 9am pst on KylieCosmetics.com! Everything is clean, vegan, and ready to go global. This means no animal oils, parabens or gluten, and we banned a list of over 1,600 other ingredients from being used in products, but made sure everything has amazing pigmentation and performance.” Let…

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Monthly Surfactants – April 2021

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Surfactants Monthly – April 2021 Later this month – May 25th – 27th, we have our 11th World Surfactants Conference. It’s online. Co-produced, as always,  between your author and ICIS. We’ve got P&G, American Chemistry Council, Buss, IP, Integrity Biochem, Kline, Stepan and many many more participants with papers, panels and, of course, the famous surfactants awards which bring you the best and brightest in the indusry. Sign up and you can still get the cheap rate until May 7th. End of commercial. If you’re only here for the music – and I happen to know that’s a meaningful minority of you, skip to the end, where we muse on the incredible catalogue of Black Sabbath. Ever wondered what it takes to become the category defining best-in-the-world at something? One way – create the category, which is of course what Black Sabbath did. One can imagine some early 70’s movie director saying “hey get me one of those, like, heavy metal guitarist type guys, from central casting” and out would trot Tony Iommi. But of course, that would never happen because heavy metal was just invented in 1970 with the release of the first Black Sabbath album, largely written by…

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Surfactants Monthly – March 2021

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Surfactants Monthly – March 2021 Happy Easter and Passover. A time of deliverance and re-birth for many of our readers and perhaps my favourite time of year. By the way, I can’t help noting that this month is chock full of news – kinda-like those Easter egss full of Cadbury’s buttons.. Before I muse further (scroll to the end), commercial needs dictate that I mention our upcoming online surfactants conference on 25th – 27th of May. Visit the link and check it out and register to attend. It’s not free, this time,  but it’s worth the price of admission. As a foretaste, if you like, or indeed a sort of literary foreshadowing of what we’ll be dealing with at the event, there is an interview of me by the great Rochelle Ross of ICIS, that you can access at this link. You’ll have to give your contact info to ICIS to see it but don’t worry, they are GDPR, strict constructionists and will not abuse your data – at all. You might have noticed that in our Linkedin group (you’re not a member?!?! Join now, please.) a bit of activity with polls. Here are some interesting results – much of…

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Surfactants Monthly – January 2021

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Surfactants Monthly – January 2021 Well, it was a bit different to last January, eh? No meetings in Orlando and that nice mid-winter golf outing on the Sunday. But look, most of us are working, getting a nice salary and not facing foreclosure, eviction and bankruptcy unlike folks in some industries.  Something here for you to look forward to: Our upcoming slate of surfactants conferences for ’21 – still online.  We have i) World on 25 – 27th May and ii) EU/Asia on 9 – 10th November. Go to the site for more information . We also have the training courses starting March 9th.  Right now, we are not taking registrations, but you can “register interest” here . So you might want to do that. I want to  highlight particularly the awards. We are re-launching and refurbishing these as they are becoming a hugely popular feature. By the way, if you want to see what I looked like without a haircut in the first US lockdown in 2020 see the video I recorded to outline our training courses. If you’d rather not, you can get all the key information on the site, without, thankfully, having to see the video. This…

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December 2020 – Monthly Review

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December 2020 – Monthly Surfactants Review Happy New Year, my dear readers and thanks for all your great comments and expressions of support over the past year. Every time, someone tells me they read these blogs, I get a bit of a chill. It’s excitement mingled with some pride, obviously but also a bit of nervousness. If folks are really reading this stuff, it had better be good – or at the very least, not boring. The one commandment I have for our blog here is “above all, do not be boring”. If this ever happens, please do let me know, won’t you? A great clutch of news items this month. As always, most of the news is provided courtesy of my good friends at ICIS. I get no recompense from them for promoting their service, but, as you know, we produce a series of conferences together. In any case, if you like what you read here or experience at the conferences, you should subscribe to their stuff. Fair enough? Spoiler alert: The end of the blog contains what I believe to the biggest news of the month, if not the year – out of Brazil. It’s not too surprising…

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Surfactants Monthly – November 2020

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Surfactants Monthly November 2020 We had an election. I checked outside every morning this past month. The sun rises (eventually) and when I step onto the cold bathroom tile and extend my left hand to flick the light switch, the lights light, every, single, time. Turn on the shower and, wow, beautiful hot/warm/turbulent-flow water at just-the-right pressure gushes forth, releasing also a rather pleasant steam cloud – just like the past thousands of mornings. I step into the plate glass enclosure (is this getting too graphic for you? Don’t worry, we cherish our G-rating at the blog) and confront 5 different body washes and soaps at eye-level. I ignore all of them and grab my Irish Spring off its own shelf. Aaah the fragrant aroma of the old country… top o’ the morning to you, world. I stretch a vocal chord or two and summon one of the household gods. Alexa, play the best guitarist. Bucky Pizzarelli fills the translucent temple with a glissando. Alexa – not funny. Dave, Michael, Alex and Eddie enter stage left and ..tcchmff, tttlnk, tttlnk, waoawohhhhng.. Eruption erm, well, erupts into consciousness. Pulse quickens. Four-decade old memories float up, of a younger, leaner, more testosterone-drenched…

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Surfactants Monthly – October 2020

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October 2020 – Monthly Review What a month! Another record for basic surfactants but – what will we all be doing at the end of January? We won’t, most likely, be in Orlando, FL as the ACI has made the prudent decision to go virtual for their annual meeting. Not unexpected but I’m sure I’ll miss being there in person and I expect you will too. No matter, the industry as a whole does great and continue to …. what? You know.. “make civilization civilized”. Our next surfactant event comes up in about a week on November 10th. It’s the digital European and Asian Surfactant Conference. It’s free, but you have to register or you may be locked out for platform capacity reasons. Register here. Here’s something to think about. I’ve been in and around surfactants for almost 40 years. And, like most people, I’ve been a daily surfactant user for almost 60 years. I still meet people that cannot even pronounce the word surfactants – and that includes some lifelong friends. Now and again, I’ll come across someone (not in the course of business) who knows what they are and what they do and that our entire civilized world…

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