ARKEMA SA - PLASTICS

 

 

 

 

Arkema SA is a specialty chemicals and advanced materials company headquartered in Colombes, near Paris, France.

Created in 2004 when French oil major Total restructured its chemicals business, Arkema was introduced at the Paris stock exchange in May 2006. With a turnover of 8.8 billion €, Arkema has 20,000 employees in more than 55 countries, 13 research centers worldwide, and a total of 136 production plants in Europe, North America and Asia and the rest of the world.

Arkema is organized into three business segments: Coating Solutions, Industrial Chemicals and Performance Products.

High Performance Materials

High Performance Materials segment gathers four high value added product lines: Specialty polyamides, Fluoropolymers (PVDF), molecular sieves for filtration and adsorption and organic peroxides.

Its flagship brands are Rilsan(polyamide), Luperox(Organic Peroxide), Kynar (PVDF), Siliporite (Molecular Sieves).

Industrial specialties

Industrial Specialties segment produces major chemical intermediates such as thio-chemicals (for animal nutrition, gas natural odorant), fluorochemicals (for refrigeration, air conditioning, blowing agent for insulating foam), PMMA (or acrylic glass for furnitures, automotive applications, noise barriers), and hydrogen peroxide (pulp and textile bleaching, chemical synthesis, water treatment).

The business segment’s flagship brands include Altuglas (PMMA), Albone (hydrogen peroxide), DMDS (agricultural fumigant) and Forane (refrigerants).

Coating Solutions

Starting from upstream acrylic monomers, the Group has built a presence across every segment of the coating market. Its portfolio of coating materials and technologies includes waterborne, solventborne, powder coating resins and additives from Arkema Coating Resins, rheology additives for waterborne coatings from Coatex and photocure resins for optic fibers, graphic arts, electronics, etc. from Sartomer. Its flagship brands are Envia, Rheotec, Sarbio.

 

Philanthropy

 

Research and development spending totaled roughly 150 million euros, with half allocated to “green chemistry.” Arkema employs more than 1,200 researchers, whose work focuses on two main areas: ultra-high performance polymers and sustainable development solutions.

Arkema has made sustainable development a central focus of its R&D strategy, introducing a broad array of innovative materials to help customers reduce their energy use, increasing its use of renewable feedstock, developing nanostructured materials and devising the processes of the future.

Arkema has been present in the world of sailing since 2013 and sponsors Lalou Roucayrol’s team. In April 2018, the Group decided to extend this technical and human partnership to 2022.

 

Social Commitment Charter

Arkema strives to bring their customers sustainable and innovative solutions, contributing to the Sustainability Development Goals of the United Nations.

They are committed to the climate and reduction in the environmental footprint of their business activities, working to reduce resources such as energy and water and to use renewables to foster a circular economy. This Charter was endorsed in May of 2018 by Chairman Thierry Le Henaff, their CEO.

 

 

 

 

COMPANY A - Z

EMPLOYEES

$ BILLIONS

-

-

-

ALPLA:

17,300

3.3

Аrkema SA:

20,000

8.8

BASF:

39,000

63.7

Borealis AG:

-

-

Borouge (Abu Dhabi Polymers Co Ltd):

6,500

7.2

Braskem SA:

-

-

ChevronPhillips Chemical:

5,000

13.4

CNPC:( China National Petroleum Corp):

1,470,190

326.0

Dow Chemicals:

14,000

49.0

DuPont:

-

-

ENI S.p.A. Ente Nazionale Idrocarburi:

33,000

61.6

Exxon Mobil:

75,600

290.0

Formosa Plastics Corporation:

2,800

5.0

INEOS (Ineos Group AG):

19,000

60.0

Lanxess:

16,700

7.9

LG Chem:

14,000

17.8

Lyondell Bassell:

13,000

33.0

Polyone Corp:

-

-

Reliance Industries Ltd:

-

-

Repsol SA:

-

-

Sasol Ltd:

-

-

SABIC: (Saudi Arabia Basic Industries Corp)

40,000

35.4

Sinopec:

249,000

314.4

Tosoh Corp:

-

-

Total SA:

-

-

 

 

 

We cannot do without plastics in our modern society. They are incredibly versatile, extending the capabilities of mankind. But plastic is getting bad press from a lack of recycling efficiency in many countries where significant quantities are being flushed out to sea via rivers and other coastal dumping.

 

There is nothing wrong with plastic if it is disposed of carefully. Oil derived plastics are a finite resource and non-renewable demanding special attention, as with the changeover from burning fossil fuels to renewables.

 

This gives us another good reason to develop a system for making the best use of plastic, and this includes recycling it way more effectively than before. We cannot afford to waste plastic that is in our oceans, and we are talking about at least 8 million tons a year of the stuff going out to sea.

 

 

 

FAST FOOD SLOW DEATH - It's not just fast food, it is our exploitative society that is poisoning the planet, without thought for the consequences. We've been living at artificially low prices at the expense of killing other life on earth. Eat cheap now and suffer expensively later, with health services picking up the tab and costing the taxpayer more than if we'd dealt with ocean dumping up front. We are talking here about the consequences of eating toxic fish. Technically, it is possible to remove plastic from seawater. There are two projects currently trying to achieve this, the Ocean Cleanup Projects of Boyan Slat and his giant floating booms, and the Cleaner Ocean Foundation and SeaVax.

 

 

It's easy to dismiss plastics as cheap and nasty materials that wreck the planet, but if you look around you, the reality is that we depend on it. If you want cars, toys, replacement body parts, medical adhesives, paints, computers, water pipes, fiber-optic cables, and a million other things, you'll need plastics as well.

 

If you think we struggle to live with plastics, try imagining for a moment how we'd live without them. Plastic is pretty fantastic. We just need to be smarter and more sensible about how we make it, use it, and recycle it when we're done with it.

 

Most plastics are synthetic, they'd never spontaneously appear in the natural world and they're still a relatively new technology, so animals and other organisms haven't really had chance to evolve so they can feed on them or break them down.

 

Since a lot of the plastic items we use are meant to be low-cost and disposable, we create an awful lot of plastic trash. Put these two things together and you get problems like the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, a giant "lake" of floating plastic in the middle of the North Pacific Ocean made from things like waste plastic bottles.

 

How can we solve horrible problems like this? One solution is better public education. If people are aware of the problem, they might think twice about littering the environment or maybe they'll choose to buy things that use less plastic packaging.

 

Another solution is to recycle more plastic, but that also involves better public education, and it presents practical problems too (the need to sort plastics so they can be recycled effectively without contamination).

 

A third solution is to develop bioplastics and biodegradable plastics that can break down more quickly in the environment.

 

 

 

 

LINKS & REFERENCE

 

https://www.arkema.com/en/webzine/story/Elium-resin-a-disruptive-innovation-in-the-world-of-composites/

http://www.polymerdatabase.com/Polymer%20Brands/Plastic%20Manufacturers.html

 

 

 

 

BUILD UP - Plastic has accumulated in five ocean hot spots called gyres, see here in this world map derived from information published by 5 Gyres. All that plastic just floating around is a huge waste of resources in a sustainable sense, where we should be aiming for a circular economy.

 

 

 

 

 

ABS - BIOMAGNIFICATION - CANCER - CARRIER BAGS - COTTON BUDS - DDT - FISHING NETS - HEAVY METALS - MARINE LITTER

MICROBEADS - MICRO PLASTICS - NYLON -  PACKAGING - PCBS -  PET - PETROLEUM - PLASTICS -  POLYCARBONATE - POLYOLEFINS

POLYPROPYLENE - POLYSTYRENE - POLYTHENE - POPS PVC - SHOES - SINGLE USE - SOUP - STRAWS - WATER

 

 

 This website is provided on a free basis as a public information service. copyright © Cleaner Oceans Foundation Ltd (COFL) (Company No: 4674774) 2019. Solar Studios, BN271RF, United Kingdom. COFL is a company without share capital.

 

 

 

 

ARKEMA SA PLASTICS CHEMICALS MANUFACTURERS