News from Notch Consulting, Inc.

Klean Industries Inc. (Vancouver, Canada) has announced that its CEO, Jesse Klinkhamer, will be a keynote speaker at the Carbon Black Asia Pacific conference being held Singapore from 16th to 18th November 2011. Klean Industries is a privately-held corporation that converts “high calorific waste streams into valuable commodities.”

Notch Consulting is also delivering a keynote address at the Singapore conference, which is being organized by Sukhjeet Sekhon of Glencore. It promises to be a great event. Here is the conference website.

Note: In an earlier version of this post, Mr. Sekhon’s employer was listed incorrectly. I apologize for this error and for any confusion it caused.

According to proposed changes in the Union budget for FY 2011/12, India would reduce the customs duty on carbon black feedstock from 5% to 2.5%.

On March 1, Saudi Basic Industries Corp. and ExxonMobil Chemical Co. announced that they had selected Jubail, Saudi Arabia as the location of a new joint venture plant that will produce EPDM rubber, thermoplastic elastomers (EPDM/TPE, TPO, Butyl, SBR/PBR) and carbon black. The project now moves fully into Front-End Engineering and Design (FEED). Total capacity of the plant will be some 400,000 tonnes/year, though individual capacities were not announced. The project also will include a vocational training institute and product application development and support center.

According to the announcement, the site was selected because of integration opportunities with Kemya Al-Jubail Petrochemical Co., a SABIC/ExxonMobil JV already located in Jubail.

Here is SABIC’s press release.