Business Roundup

Honam Petrochemical will spend about $454 million to boost ethylene cracker capacity at its Yeosu, South Korea, petrochemical complex from 750,000 metric tons per year to 1 million metric tons. The company will also expand downstream polyethylene and polypropylene plants.

Air Liquide will spend more than $100 million in China to build new facilities that will supply industrial gases to two steel producers. A 2,200-metric-ton-per-day air separation unit in Tangshan, in northeastern China, will supply oxygen and nitrogen to the Bohai Steel Group, and an 800-metric-ton oxygen unit will supply Linfen, in the inland province of Shanxi.

Carbon Holdings has licensed Dow Chemical’s Unipol polyethylene process for three new units to be built in Ain Sokhna, Egypt. A 405,000-metric-ton-per-year unit will produce only high-density polyethylene, and two additional 405,000-metric-ton production units will be “swing” lines capable of making high-density or linear low-density polyethylene.

Linde Nippon Sanso, part of the Linde Group, will supply silane and ammonia gas for Bosch Solar Energy’s new crystalline silicon solar-cell manufacturing site in Arnstadt, Germany. Bosch is ramping up production capacity at the site to 630 MW annually.

Kuraray, a Japanese chemical maker, has completed a 10,000-metric-ton-per-year polyvinyl butyral expansion, bringing the capacity of its Frankfurt am Main, Germany, plant to 39,000 metric tons. PVB is used as an interlayer in safety glass and as an encapsulant for photovoltaic cells.

International Flavors & Fragrances has appointed Douglas D. Tough chairman and CEO as of March 1. Currently nonexecutive chairman of IFF, Tough will leave his job as CEO of Australian protective clothing maker Ansell to join IFF full time.

PotashCorp of Saskatchewan (PCS) spent $231 million to increase its holdings in fellow fertilizer firm Israel Chemicals by a little more than 1%, bringing its stake to just under 14%. The Canadian firm owns stakes in other fertilizer companies, such as Jordan’s Arab Potash, which along with the Israeli firm added $205 million to PCS’s 2009 earnings of $988 million.

Abbott Laboratories has acquired Solvay Laboratories for $6.2 billion. Completion of the deal followed European Commission approval that was conditioned upon the divestment of Solvay’s cystic fibrosis testing business.