We don’t often write about the Japanese consumer product and chemicals company, Kao here, but I got a press release that talks about a major new investment in the US. And it reads, part:

Kao Corporation has decided to build a new tertiary amine production plant in Pasadena, Texas, United States, mainly to meet growing demand for sterilizing/cleaning applications but also for wide range of other industrial applications.

.. Kao has the world's largest production capacity [of tertiary amines][ with three production sites in Japan, the Philippines, and Germany.

Early in the month, huge news from Indorama Ventures (owners of the old Huntsman North America Surfactants business and, of course, more recently of Oxiteno, along with legacy Old World Industries Assets). The key point is that the company’s IOD (integrated Oxides and Derivatives) business has been set up as a standalone pure-play surfactant company called Indovinya, and is ready for a spin-off / IPO. Big news, Indeed The first slug of information came in a March 4th press release, which I’ll reproduce in its entirety here. Below that, I will summarize in bullet point form, the key points from the company’s Capital Markets Day presentations on March 5th.

Stepan is the bellwether of the surfactants industry (says who? Me. I don’t believe they have ever referred to themselves that way). Bellwether – according to the OED means “the leading sheep of a flock, with a bell on its neck. Something that leads or indicates a trend. "Basildon is now the bellwether of Britain's voting behaviour". For non-UK readers, think something like Michigan or Wisconsin or some other so-called swing state. Anyway – what I’m saying is that - how Stepan does in surfactants is a good indicator of how the many private companies or subsidiaries of larger companies – in our industry are doing. Make sense? And look, you Stepanophiles, I’m not likening the company to sheep or saying they are all Basildon men (a key constituent of the great Maggie Thatcher in the 70’s). With me? Good. So Stepan released its 2023 results recently. Let’s dig in and see what’s happening.

In a mid-January press release, Evonik noted that they had manufactured their first product from world’s first industrial-scale rhamnolipid biosurfactant plant. And from hereon, I’m quoting the release:

Evonik has manufactured the first product from its industrial-scale facility for sustainable biosurfactants that has been completed ahead of schedule at its site in Slovakia.

New triple-digit million-euro facility in Slovakia completed ahead of schedule

Meets high demand for biobased, biodegradable rhamnolipids for cleaning and personal care applications

Latest milestone toward sustainability-driven biosolutions

Early in the month, Holiferm made an encouraging announcement. In summary the company raised £18.5M ($23.7 M) to scale up to 15kta bio-surfactant capacity from Rhapsody Venture Partners and Clean Growth Fund. BTW – I had the opportunity to tour the Holiferm site in Wallasey (near Liverpool) in early November. Very cool. I wish Ben the team much success. They’ll be presenting at our conference of course in May.

LAB and LAS: - It’s hard to get market information on these two pillars of the surfactants market in North America or Europe but the Asian market affords some transparency for us. LAB prices in Asia for November were in the range of $1,440 to $1,440, off by a modest 1.3 – 1.4% since last month. The balance of the LAS market approaches long as China demand remains steady but elsewhere the slow winter season kicks in. Notwithstanding the LAB direction, LAS prices in the region are nudging up by 1.5 – 1.7% into the $1,270 - $1,370 range vs a month ago , in an attempt by producers to improve threadbare margins.

As regular readers know, we like to artfully weave into these blog postings, subtle promos for various business interests of the author. Most of the time, you hardly notice them. But I actually want you to notice this one. So here we are: Shameless plug for the upcoming Surfactants Business Essentials Course (Virtual Version) produced and taught by me. In partnership, of course with the great I.C.I.S. The next 3-part course mini-series starts up Thanksgiving week (in the US); November 20 – 22 in the rest of the world. We hit Singapore at 6PM (local time), The UAE at 2PM, London at 10AM and for those really keen to pack in a full pre-Thanksgiving professional enrichment, New York at 5AM. If someone could join me in this pre-dawn classroom in the US Eastern timezone, I will buy you a coffee! We go back to first principles – What is a hydrophobe? A hydrophile?.. and where do they come from? And we dig deep into the complex economic drivers in key supply chains like fatty alcohols and ethylene oxide. We talk about your favorite companies – customers, suppliers and maybe even your own employer. We’ve been running this course for over…

Happy Labor Day. Not sure what that’s supposed to mean, really. Perhaps – be happy that you are not being forced to work on this day. So the greeting applies only to those not working shifts or in many service industries or in other blighted corners of the economy where workers are working because they have to and are most decidedly not happy about it. Fine. I recently hosted for P2, an Artificial Intelligence / Machine Learning / Self Driving Labs (AI/ML/SDL) workshop at the University of Toronto in partnership with the recently formed and generously financed, Acceleration Consortium there. My opening remarks went like this: I have a newspaper cutting in my study that talks about my great-grandfather who went down the pit (coal-mine ) at the age of 9 to get coal out of hard to reach pockets. He managed to raise a family despite the less than optimal work-life balance. His son, my grandfather, lived then in more enlightened times and went down the pit at age 13. He also managed to raise a family and my father avoided the pit altogether. He went into an office at age 16 and was working when the weekend as…

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…

Baloney. We were just jealous of the flashy cars, big houses and women with perfect teeth. Now that I have the cars, the house and such, I’ve realized that there is even more to be jealous of – freedom of speech, economic freedom, the idea that all men are created equal. Things that the declaration really spelled out to a candid world

Independence Day Edition My first American fireworks: Princeton, NJ, July 4th 1985. We sit on the bonnet (hood) of the car, leaning back on the windscreen (windshield) looking up, waiting for something to happen. A crummy high-school band starts up and a choir or whatever gets going – Oh-oh say can you see, by the dawn’s early light. Makes no sense. Apparently the Yanks have an even more boring national anthem than we do. What so proudly we hailed at the twilight’s last.. More nonsense. How much of this do we have to sit through before the fireworks? Whose broad stripes and bright stars. Good grief. This is bollocks. Shoulda brought more beer. O’er the ramparts.. Ramparts eh.. there’s that wine in the boot but it’s probably warm by now – anyway it’s a work day tomorrow, flying out 6AM so.. better just make this one last. And the rockets’ red glaaaaare… BOOM BOOM WHOOSH.. Wow ****! The bombs bursting in aaaiiiiirr… BANG, BANG, B A N G Bloody ******’ ‘ell… BANG ! Now that’s fireworks, baby! “Is that the national anthem?” “Er.. yeah..” “Oh – Frickin’ Wild. Is it always like this?” “Erm .. yeah, well on July 4th…..

Greetings from Rome! Welcome to our CESIO edition. If you’re looking for a summary of the presentations and discussions at CESIO, sorry, we don’t do that here. You should have bought a ticket and shown up. It was an outstanding event, well produced and organized. Kudos to CESIO president, Tony Gough. Alex, Chantal and the rest of the team. I’ll tell you about my experience there if you’re interested. I had the usual crazy title for my talk and once again the organizers kindly indulged me with a speaking slot to kick off the business track on Wednesday morning. Dinosaur eats Unicorn was the paper title that got folks in the room at 8.30AM after a late night prior at the gala dinner. Session chair, Felix Mueller, reminded me that he introduced me on my first occasion as a CESIO speaker in 2011. He also reminded the audience that, according to my last talk in Munich, 2019, I was friends with Debbie Harry (Blondie) and that my talks are invariably interesting, thought provoking and entertaining. So.. no pressure then. We kicked off with a snippet of Blue Öyster Cult (Godzilla – Dinosaur – geddit?) to ramp up the dopamine in…

Greetings from Jersey City. We were back,on the top floor of the Hyatt with stunning views all round of the skylines of Manhattan and Jersey City. Our conference concluded on Friday May 5th, and, while we generally eschew event summaries here, I do feel motivated to relay some of what the ICIS reporters said about the proceedings. Joe Chang, Melissa Wheeler and Lucas Hall each reported on and spoke at the conference. A gathering of the masters of the surfactant universe if ever there was one. On Thursday afternoon, we heard from IP Specialities’, Martin Herrington, a master of the oleochemical universe, who said that global oleochemicals markets face short- and long-term challenges as players grapple with high-cost inventories in a weak demand environment alongside expanding biofuels policies and trade regulations.. While oleochemical prices are down alongside depressed demand conditions globally, many companies continue to sit on high-cost inventories, increasing their risk of insolvency. Longer-term, supply chain reliability remains a concern following several unexpected plant disruptions within close proximity to one another. Expanding biofuels policies, namely the expansion of renewable diesel capacity in the US market, raise concerns over the viability of traditional biofuels like biodiesel as well as the…

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…

We divide these blogs, usually, into parts and I allow you to scroll to the item or items of interest, which may be the news or the music section. Today however, you have to read this commercial message before moving on. Don’t even try to scroll down. The screen is locked until you read and act on the following: Yes, it’s the May 4 – 5th ICIS / Neil A Burns World Surfactants Conference in Jersey City, NJ. It falls directly after SCC Suppliers Day and so if you are in town, come on by. We will have big familiar names like BASF and Sasol, along with some brand new ones like Ruby Bio and the Consumer Brand Association. Plus some secret special guests that I can’t yet reveal. But wait, there’s more. I have a code for you that will save you some money off of an already low price. Just use this MKTSTDNBB5 at checkout. (Always wanted to say that..) So.. did you click on the link, register and use the code? Yes? Good OK – so you can scroll on down now to the news and music sections if you like. The News Right at the start…

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…