From the 1st of February, Daniela Almeida will be joining the Solventis sales team to focus on growing our presence in the Mediterranean and Benelux markets. We all look forward to working with and supporting Dani in her role as Regional Sales Manager.
After nearly 6 months of falling numbers, the European Propylene and Ethylene contracts have been fixed up €90/tn and €99/tn respectively. These increases have been due to rising crude prices as well as a cut back on production by the major producers towards the end of 2011, shortening supply. These increases in feedstock prices will result in price increases across the board for Solventis’ products with effect from the 1st of February so please contact you Solventis sales representative for updated pricing.
Solventis is currently looking to employ a sales assistant to join the team in our Antwerp office. The main job role will be to assist the sales team with both day to day sales administration as well as dealing directly with the customers.
The candidate must meet the following requirements-
Solventis is a stockist and full bulk distributor of petrochemical solvents with offices in the UK and Antwerp. We distribute our products throughout Europe in bulk road tankers as well as exporting containers of drums into Western and Northern Africa, the Middle East and North and South America.
If you would like to apply for this vacancy please contact Michel Slap.
We are pleased to announce two top level appointments at Solventis-
Roger Van Herck joins us as Logistics Manager in the Antwerp office. Roger has worked many years for Huntsman and brings a wealth of logistics experience with him. His email address is rvanherck@solventis.net
Neil Dudman joins us as Commercial Director, based in our Guildford office. Neil was previously managing director of Gantrade Europe. Neil has been in the chemical industry for over 30 years and has experience in a wide range of products. His email address is ndudman@solventis.net
Sales Assistant- Antwerp
Solventis is currently looking to employ a sales assistant to join the team in our Antwerp office. The main job role will be to assist the European Sales Manager with both day to day sales administration as well as dealing directly with the customers.
The candidate must meet the following requirements-
Solventis is a stockist and full bulk distributor of petrochemical solvents with offices in the UK and Antwerp. We distribute our products throughout Europe in bulk road tankers as well as exporting containers of drums into Western and Northern Africa, the Middle East and North and South America.
If you would like to apply for this vacancy please contact Michel Slap.
BP announced last Friday that they had declared force majeure on Acetic Acid from their 530kt/yr plant in Hull, UK. The FM is due to last for 50 days, affecting both acetic acid and acetic anhydride, putting their customers on a 40% allocation. The site normally runs two units with the problems occurring on the reformer of one of the units, which will be down for repairs.
BP’s force majeure is likely to affect the Northwest European supply of downstream products such as ethyl acetate, n-propyl acetate, n-butyl acetate, iso butyl acetate, vinyl acetate monomer and iso propyl acetate. Solventis is a stockist and full bulk distributor of these and a large range of other products. To view a full range of our products please visit www.solventis.net/products or feel free to contact us on sales@solventis.net.
Crude oil prices have been seen to soften in recent weeks for a number of reasons, one of which being due to economic growth data coming out of the developing nations such as India and China not being as strong as had been forecast. This in turn has caused naphtha
prices to decrease, taking with it Toluene, Xylene and other derivatives.
MEK demand in Japan has begun to ease after a period of product shortages and intense price increases following the devastating earthquake in March which severely damaged the region’s main production facility. One reason for this reduction in demand is due to users of MEK reformulating to use Ethyl Acetate as a replacement as the price differential
between the two products reaches 40%.
The European ETAC market remains firm while a major producer enters in to a 10 day shut down and Celanese continue on strict allocation due to acetic acid shortages. Solventis currently has availability of Ethyl Acetate in our tank storage facility in Antwerp which we can offer both delivered or on a collected basis. In addition to ETAC, we also stock over 20 different solvents in Antwerp so please feel free to contact us on sales@solventis.net .
In the aftermath of the earthquake, and subsequent tsunami that devastated much of Japan earlier this month, solvent availability throughout the region has become tight. In reply to this change in the market Japanese buyers have been reaching out to new European distributors and Solventis has been exporting Isotanks and containers of our range of solvents out to end users and distributors in Japan.
Methyl Ethyl Ketone (MEK) in particular has been affected by the disaster. The earthquake caused damage to the region’s largest MEK plant which has resulted in tight supply across Japan and Asia and this twinned with a global shortage has left many Japanese buyers willing to take as much product as can be sourced to cover their requirements.
These market factors have caused MEK prices to rise dramatically in Asia with European numbers following suit as sellers can secure higher numbers in the export market.
Solventis is a stockist and distributor of solvents active in both the European and global export markets. We stock over 20 products in our bulk storage facilities in Antwerp, some of which include Acetone, Ethyl Acetate, Butyl Glycol, Iso Butyl Acetate and Mono Propylene Glycol.
We welcome any enquiries from all global markets. Please email us on sales@solventis.net
Use of specific solvents to coat materials for aesthetic and/or functional improvement has changed over the last hundred years. There are many different types of solvents used, and around 1920, the use of a specific group of solvents increased after it was discovered they were more functional than the previously used products. Prior to this time, n-butyl acetate was used as the primary coating solvent for industrial use. The introduction of a new class of chemicals allowed for a large void to be filled.
The glycol ether and glycol ether ester solvents filled this void. These are special in that they have a certain orientation of oxygen atoms in their chemical structure. These oxygen atoms are part of the alcohol (-OH) and ether (R-0-R) groups found in these chemicals. This makes for better coating solvents and allows for a perfect evaporation rate (how fast the coating will “dry” or evaporate, leaving the pertinent chemicals), which gives the solvent other good qualities, including the shine and protection it provides. This evaporation speed is much slower than the old standard of n-butyl acetate. Faster doesn’t necessarily mean better in the case of coating solvents. Finally, this class of coating solvents works well because they don’t have a very staunch smell, allowing for broader ranges of use.
A specific chemical containing glycol ether and/or glycol ether ester is used based on the specific coating needs of a product. One example is ethylene glycol monomethyl ether, which has an evaporation speed of 0.5 (20 times slower than n-butyl acetate). There are many other glycol ether/glycol ether ester chemicals, all of which only differ in the orientation or number of these oxygen-containing groups. The specific use for each was determined by experimenting to determine which would work best for a specific coating need. There are literally hundreds of coating solvents used today, but the introduction of chemicals containing these groups went a long way to replace the old and outdated standard of n-butyl acetate. This helped the industry move forward.
As a bulk stockist and distributor of solvents, Solventis is always looking for new products to store in our tanks at Oiltanking, Vopak ACS and Noordatie in Antwerp. We now stock over 18 products in bulk, with the latest additions being Butyl Glycol Acetate, Butyl Di Glycol Acetate and Di Propylene Glycol. We welcome customer enquiries for full bulk loads or composite loads involving 2 or more products on both FCA and delivered basis.
