Surfactants Monthly March (and Early April)

March 2020 Surfactants Monthly - Abbreviated

This month we have an abbreviated column due to a lot of other things going on.

Let’s see.. tips and tricks for working from home? Nah.. Looking good on zoom calls? Nope.. How it’s really neighborly on our street now.. I think you’ve read all that already. I would, however, like you to consider joining our P2 Science CT Foodbank Fund Drive. Click the link and support folks who, through no fault of their own are out of work and out of money. I read that a third of renters are late paying April’s rent. It’s those people. You’re living paycheck to paycheck and then the government shuts down the economy, so we all don’t get infected. It’s never happened before. Many had their livelihoods taken away. Many were forced to work from home in their PJ’s. The latter should help the former.

Another link to consider: If you want to stay abreast of developments in brand new, renewable, cosmetics polymers, then join the P2 webcast Thursday April 9th at 1 PM Eastern.

And one more, if you’re up for it. The 10th ICIS World Surfactants Conference has been shifted back to September 16th – 18th – still in the same venue in Jersey City.

The News – In brief

Sentiment in Asia’s linear alkylbenzene (LAB) market took a turn for the worse as a result of upstream crude plunge early on Monday March 11. Buyers flocked to their suppliers asking if the latter could provide some relief for them in the wake of a plunge in crude values following Saudi surprise announcement of cut in prices and increase in oil production. However, sellers argued that current upstream movements would only be reflected in the following month.

Several suppliers were already sold out for April-loading cargoes, which did not reflect the lower cost of crude values. As such, they were not under inventory pressure. Following the crash, suppliers and buyers retreated to the sidelines to monitor the market. “This week, we stopped offering prices just to see how the market settles,” said a northeast Asian producer. The market collectively expects that April’s settlement prices for May loading cargoes would definitely be under pressure.

In India, because of a domestic plant’s maintenance, supply was considered short. Demand was stable-to-firm, and customers were still buying their regular volumes, with some asking for more material, according to several market sources in India. Discussions in southeast Asia and India were muted this week, as the market monitored crude’s situation. Buying and selling indications were also scarce as the near term outlook was still uncertain with sentiment turning bearish.

However, the tight supply situation could afford a little support to the bearish market.

US Q2 fatty alcohols contracts were assessed wider early April, but tight supply is expected to countervail throughout the quarter. Contracts for natural mid-cut alcohols among large volume buyers negotiated earlier in the quarter largely settled at a decrease amid the downward correction in feedstock palm kernel oil (PKO) costs and healthier inventory levels at the beginning of the year. Mid-cut contracts settled later in the quarter - including contracts for synthetic volumes - toward the higher end of the range, amid tightening supply in southeast Asia, Europe and the US as a result of the coronavirus, made worse by the March plunge in crude oil futures.

C1618 contracts were mixed amid similar fundamentals, with prices for mixed C1618 and C18 single-cut alcohols settling toward the lower end of the range and prices for C16 single-cut alcohols toward the higher end of the range amid more protracted supply tightness in the global market.

Contracts for premium material settled at a 3-5 cent/lb premium over non-premium volumes. Despite the settlements, supply is tight amid weaker production and sustained shipping and logistics constraints in south and southeast Asia and Europe stemming from coronavirus-related lockdowns and other disruptions. Many Asian oleochemical producers have reduced operating rates and/or declared force majeure as a result of the lockdowns and other coronavirus-related disruptions. Disruptions in Asia are causing a knock-on effect across Europe and the US, which are also facing their own constraints as a result of the virus. As a result, many Q2 shipments are delayed until later in the quarter or Q3, prompting increased demand for spot volumes at higher prices within and above the posted ranges. Ongoing supply tightness is expected to continue to put upward pressure on the market until these constraints ease and the virus subsides.

US Q2 mid-cut alcohols were assessed 3 cents/lb lower on the low end and 3 cents/lb higher on the high end at 63-78 cents/lb delivered (DEL) in the US Gulf. US Q2 C1618 alcohols were assessed 2 cents/lb lower on the low end and 3 cents/lb higher on the high end at 88 cents/lb DEL in the US Gulf.

 Right at the end of March ICIS reported that Stepan completed the acquisition of Logos Technologies' NatSurFact business. Financial terms were not disclosed. NatSurFact is a rhamnolipid-based line of surfactants made from renewable sources. Rhamnolipids are biodegradable, have low toxicity and, in some cases, have antimicrobial properties, Stepan said. "NatSurFact developed a novel fermentation process for rhamnolipids and has achieved high yields at both the bench and pilot scale," said Quinn Stepan, CEO. Stepan plans to bring the surfactants to market in the upcoming years.

That’s it on the news front. Just the top picks. As you know the chemical industry is working like hell to make (and donate in many cases) sanitizer around the world.

One thing I guess I could comment on about the lockdown. If you’re looing for good online workouts, youtube’s got a couple of great ones with many similar exercises but totally different styles.

Check out Has Fit for the man and wife team of Coach Kozak and Claudia. They’re upbeat, constantly motivational and build up a sweat and moan about the pain – just like you.

For a different vibe, check out Heather Robertson She works out to anodyne synth-pop in front of a white background. She never sweats and the form is perfect. Probably not like you. In fact, I’ve done a bit of research and it’s hard to prove her real identity. Who knows, with some CGI, AI and a well drawn avatar, you may have “Heather Robertson” without all that messy human being business.

And for our outro: A perfectly appropriate musical piece suggested by a long-time reader of the blog. Listen carefully to the opening spoken introduction…..

Surfactants Monthly – February 2020

Surfactants Monthly – February 2020

I write this month’s blog safely self-isolated in the study of a suburban New Jersey house. A trip to Home Depot this morning was cancelled out of an abundance of corona-caution and so the needed repairs in the downstairs bathroom will have to be postponed until it’s safe to visit busy hardware stores again – perhaps some time next year, hopefully. Oh well, more time to write the blog.

Saw a great movie on Netflix, Friday. The invention of lying, with Ricky Gervais. It’s from 2009 and panned by most critics, so well worth a look. It’s set in an alternative present in which humans have evolved unable ever to tell a lie, except our protagonist, Gervais, who wreaks some havoc along the way to finally getting the girl, (Jennifer Garner) and learning a good lesson.

Yeah it's corny and soppy but that sometimes makes a truly great movie for me. A classic scene is this one, where we get to see a Coke commercial in this alternative, brutally honest, world.

Regular readers and attendees at my conferences will know why I find this commercial absolutely delightful – and why I seem to have watched it upwards of 30 times already on Youtube this weekend. Well I won’t retread old ground, except to say that it’s been the mighty and self-righteous Pepsi that’s been on the receiving end of my happy sarcasm for the past several years. Here’s the thing: Let’s imagine we’re in that alternative present and we had to run a commercial for our industry, or indeed the chemical industry as a whole. Would the unvarnished truth be as embarrassing and awkward as that Coke commercial? No of course not. It would be pretty much what we talk about at our events and training courses. The truth about our industry is truly mind-blowing. It’s amazing what these products do and the role they play in making lives better and, as I like to say; making civilization, well, civilized. A brutally honest world would suit us just fine compared to many other human economic endeavors. “It’s basically just brown sugar water” “ we put the polar bear on the can to attract kids”.

I’d love to have just one day in that world wouldn’t you? Well you can in a sense. In fact you can have three days if you like: May 13th, 14th and 15th. We’ll be telling the whole truth about our surfactants industry from the palm plantation to the supermarket shelf – and beyond to the consumer’s heart and soul – the GenZ consumer, that is. We’ll tell everything like it is, no BS. Of course, no babies will be called ugly as we’re not complete sociopaths. We’ll just enjoy the ability to say what we think and do what we say and engage in beautiful intellectual engagement and free speech with informed and conscientious people who don't feel awkward about telling the truth. I’ve never been to a soft drinks conference but I have to believe that it’s got to be a much less forthright environment than one of our events.

Starting the news this month: The great Lucas Hall, ICIS detergent alcohol expert and successor to the legendary Judith Taylor writes that US fatty alcohols prices continued to face upward pressure at the start of the month, despite the downward correction in the oil palm complex stemming from decreased demand for edible oils in China amid the ongoing outbreak of coronavirus in the country.

As prices for feedstock palm kernel oil (PKO) have come down much more significantly than crude palm oil (CPO) or palm stearin, however, mid-cut sellers have begun to lower their offers for February and March volumes as buyers shift to buying more spot material over contracted volumes.

Spot prices for mid-cut alcohols were heard notionally lower, in the 70 cent/lb DEL (delivered) range, as sellers lower their offers to attract bidders amid the downward correction in feedstock costs in southeast Asia. The C16-18 alcohols market has held more firmly, as the market is not as subject to swings in PKO pricing. Spot prices for C16-18 alcohols were also heard in the upper 70 cent/lb DEL range, underpinned by strong demand in the US on restocking efforts despite the downtrend in feedstock costs. Q2 contract negotiations remain limited, nonetheless, as market players continue to eye developments in Asia alongside the anticipated startup of Sasol's Ziegler alcohols expansion in early Q2. If palm prices remain on a downtrend alongside the startup of Sasol's alcohols expansion, Q2 pricing could become more competitive as sellers vie for market share among buyers with formulations that can utilize either natural-based or synthetic alcohols.

Later in the month, as corona-economics started to apply; Hall writes that the uncertain effect that the coronavirus (Covid-19) will have on the oil palm complex is delaying early discussions regarding US Q2 fatty alcohols contracts.

Buyers have largely moved to the sidelines, shifting to more spot buying over negotiating Q2 contract volumes, amid expectations that prices for feedstock palm oils may fall further as muted demand for edible oils in China puts downward pressure on the market.

The pressure is being most significantly felt in the natural mid-cut C12-C14 detergent range of fatty alcohols commonly consumed in the US over the C16-C18 chain alcohols, as feedstock palm kernel oil (PKO) costs have fallen more significantly than palm oil since the start of the year. Spot volumes for mid-cut alcohols have been heard done in the mid-to-upper 70 cent/lb ($1,543/tonne) range DEL (delivered) US Gulf. Some sellers are unwilling to lower their offers, as the price of material currently making its way into the market is reflective of feedstock prices 4-6 weeks ago, when costs were much higher. Feedstock costs rose the last three months of 2019 on the back of increased consumption into the biodiesel sector ahead of increased blending mandates rolled out in Indonesia and Malaysia at the start of 2020.

However, feedstock costs have fallen since the start of the year amid an ongoing diplomatic spat between Malaysia and India that has led to decreased consumption of edible oils in India against the backdrop of decreased demand from China during the coronavirus outbreak. Sellers are further unwilling to lower their offers, as feedstock oil inventories are at multi-year lows, suggesting longer-term upward pressure on feedstock costs despite the current downturn in the market. Moreover, feedstock costs are expected to see significant upward pressure once the Chinese market reopens.

In the meantime, pricing discussions are expected to remain competitive, as market participants hedge their bets on where feedstock prices will move in the coming weeks before Q2 contracts need to be settled.

In the crude oil market – corona-concerns weigh on pricing due to decreased travel and a slowdown in heavy industry in China in particular. Al Greenwood, in a superb analysis lays out how this could affect the US economy, particularly if oil settles well below $50/bbl. He also calls out surfactant demand in drilling and recovery as being potentially affected detrimentally. The whole article is well worth reading here. I still find it hard to get used to the idea that lower oil prices are anything but an unalloyed good for the US economy, but Al points out that US oil production is about 3 times what it was 10 years ago and so is a much larger part of the economy than it was back then.

Hmm… I still think that lower abundant and cheaper energy has to be good for the economy as a whole. Let's see, I guess, how things play out.

US EO (ethylene oxide) prices continued their downward trend, following ethylene, of course, since late last year. January EO contracts were assessed at 49.6-59.1 cents/lb ($1,093-1,303/tonne) FOB (free on board) US Gulf, a decrease of 1 cent/lb from December. January ethylene contracts settled lower by 1.25 cents/lb, on lengthening supply and lacklustre demand.

Disappointing news from Brazil mid-month as surfactants producer Oxiteno reported a net loss of reais (R) 20.4m reais ($4.67m), compared with a net income of R235.3m because of lower sales and fewer one-time benefits.

During Q4 2018, Oxiteno reported a benefit of R208.9m in other operating income, which it attributed to tax credits. Fourth-quarter gross profit, which factors out the one-time benefit, also fell year on year because sales fell faster than costs.

The following table summarizes the company's financial performance. Figures are in millions of reais.

Cost of sales fell because of cheaper prices for ethylene and palm kernel oil. Costs also fell because of lower sales volumes. These were partially offset by a weaker real. Oxiteno attributed the drop in revenue to lower international prices and to lower volumes.

Oxiteno also noted that it faced a more difficult time in starting up in Pasadena, Texas, in the US. The company keeps working to ramp up its US alkoxylation plant at Pasadena, Texas, which has yet to reach break even, Frederico Curado, CEO of Oxiteno’s parent Ultrapar, said in an update on a couple of weeks ago.

The 170,000 tonne/year alkoxylation plant, which started up in September 2018, produces surfactants and specialty alkoxylates. Curado, speaking during the Ultrapar/Oxiteno Q4 earnings call, said that the Texas plant has not yet reached break-even point - but is expected to do so in late 2020 or early 2021.

“Execution, execution, execution” is Ultrapars’ focus in running the plant, he added.

Regarding possible acquisitions, Curado, in reiterating previous comments, said that Ultrapar remains interested in the refining or related assets Brazil’s state oil major Petrobras is seeking to sell. While Utrapar cannot comment on Petrobras' divestment process, there would be synergies between the Petrobras assets and Ultrapar’s businesses, he said. The break-up of the Petrobras monopoly would improve the way that company's respective regional plants in Brazil are operated, he said. “There is an intrinsic opportunity for higher efficiency and utilisation of the  [Petrobras] assets,” he added. He also said that Ultrapar is eyeing opportunities from a reduction in the prices Petrobras charges for bulk liquefied petroleum gas (LPG). The price reduction makes LPG more competitive in regard to other energy sources, he said. In the mid-term, Ultrapar could also see upside from importing lower-cost LPG, he said.

Disappointing, although not at all unexpected news from South Africa as Sasol earnings for the closing six months of 2019 fell 72% to South African rand (R) 4.5bn ($297.1m) on the back of weaker oil pricing, softer chemicals margins, and losses from the delays and outages incurred at its Lake Charles, Louisiana, petrochemicals complex. The company booked a total of R4.8bn in losses related to the Lake Charles (LCCP) project, made up of a 1.1bn hit on earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA), R1.7bn in depreciation charges and R2bn in finance charges as the company brought units at the site online.

Rand-denominated crude oil pricing fell 9% year on year during the period, while overall gross margins dropped 2% due to the softer macroeconomic environment. The company projects that chemicals prices will continue softer through the next 12-24 months, with a structural rebound not expected until the medium-to-long term. The Lake Charles complex has been beset by delays, outages and poor weather that has seen its budget balloon from $9bn to $12.6bn-12.9bn and led to the ouster of the company’s former co-CEOs.

Sasol achieved beneficial operation at the site’s ethoxylates unit at the end of January, while a fire that knocked out the low-density polyethylene (LDPE) plant at the site that had been in the process of ramping up has not had an impact on work at the Ziegler and Guerbet alcohols units under development.

“As the LCCP units progress through the sequential beneficial operation schedule, our revenues do not yet match the costs expensed,” the company said in a statement.

The company projects that Lake Charles earnings will better match costs from the second half of 2020 onwards, and will ultimately produce a positive EBITDA contribution for the period.

Good news from India, though. I love India because people seem so positive and upbeat about things – at least in the business world that I see. Galaxy Surfactants reported a 14.6% year on year (YOY) increase in net profit for the fiscal third quarter, which ended on 31 December, to 479.9 million Indian rupees ($6.7 million). Higher profit was achieved because of a one-time deferred tax payment, it says. Revenue was down 7.5% YOY to Rs6.2 billion due to lower prices of fatty alcohol, a major raw material for the company’s performance surfactants. Galaxy states that the average price of fatty alcohol declined by 16.3% YOY to $1,138 per metric ton. It reports a 25.2% YOY rise in profit to Rs1.67 billion for the fiscal nine months ended 31 December, on sales of Rs19.4 billion, down 6.8% YOY. The company’s production volume increased to 214,711 metric tons, a rise of 8.7% YOY. Performance surfactants volume grew by 3.6% YOY to 135,337 metric tons, while specialty care product volumes increased 19% YOY to 79,374 metric tons.

Occasionally I will browse the internet to see what the culture is saying about surfactants – usually not much directly. Generally I’ll end up studying a Kardashian story or five then call it a day. Today, however, I happened upon an article in a UK newspaper. I used to read the Guardian as a 18 year-old student because I thought if made me look cool. Well, just like desert boots, bleached denim and long hair, it really didn’t (I can conclude in retrospect). The paper hasn’t changed much and a recent article has highlighted (doubtless much the trial lawyers’ delight) a new villain in the Bayer / Monsanto Roundup story. The villain is surfactants! I hesitantly link to the article here. They note that although the US National Toxicology Program (NTP) finds pure glyphosate not to cause genetic damage, the formulated product with other ingredients does. Those other ingredients include surfactants as well as other herbicides. The link to surfactants of course is the red-tofu for the Guardian reader and her trial lawyer benefactors. And the paper points out that the EU banned tallow-amine ethoxylates in 2016. The Guardian positions itself as a serious news organ but a quick look at other articles in the same paper by the same author yields one entitled “Neurotoxins on your kid's broccoli: that's life under Trump”. Enough said. The culture has spoken. Ignore it at your peril.

So what to make of this and the industry struggle with dioxane legislation in New York; all while Coke and Pepsi rule the culture. I stumbled across this quote from stoic philosopher Marcus Aurelius – no not by reading the Guardian or other high-brow publication but by listening to more lo-fi hip-hip. First the quote, then the video. I think you’ll agree, it’s brilliantly appropriate.

“When you wake up in the morning, tell yourself: the people I deal with today will be meddling, ungrateful, arrogant, dishonest, jealous and surly. They are like this because they can't tell good from evil. But I have seen the beauty of good, and the ugliness of evil, and have recognized that the wrongdoer has a nature related to my own - not of the same blood and birth, but the same mind, and possessing a share of the divine. And so none of them can hurt me. No one can implicate me in ugliness.”

Brilliant right? But is throwing away the books the right approach. Stoicism is a valid approach but maybe it’s good just to fight sometimes?

“I’m learning and reading and studying more now than I ever have in my whole life” – Yep there’s a reason we used this music for our 10 year video for the conference series.

Regardless of your approach to what comes your way, this much is true, there must be sacrifice.

Circling back to where we started the blog. Free speech, intellectual honesty, true engagement. These are good tools at our disposal to deal with professional and personal difficulties and challenges. We’ll do our best to thread these through everything we do at our three days in May.

January 2020 – Monthly Review

January 2020 – Surfactants Monthly Review

Highlights of this month, of course, include the ACI annual meeting in Orlando. Many great sessions, some organized, some spontaneous. If you’re expecting Page 6  gossip, of the what-Meghan-told Harry, what Kim wore and what Cardi did, type. Sorry. We don’t do that here. To know all that stuff, you gotta be there. Like a thousand of our colleagues were.

This blog is brought to you by Desmet Ballestra. I’ve always wanted to say that. Unfortunately it’s not true. No money changed hands to have me run the ad below. It’s interesting and relevant to the dioxane issue, so I’m putting it in here. And I guess I can say that the dioxane matter was extensively discussed at ACI. It’s a big deal if you’re a sulfonator or a user of ether sulfates in your cleaning products. You can be assured that we’ll have a number of views on this topic at our conference in May.

Last month’s editorial on Cardi B and Mother Theresa actually, surprisingly, got some positive feedback, but don’t worry – this blog will be strictly the news until the, clearly marked, final section where we dip into the lyrics of Neil Peart for our education and entertainment.

The News: At the beginning of the month, Sasol announced that their Lousiana expansions are expected to be delayed until the second quarter. The 100,000 tonne/year ethoxylates unit expansion is currently under commissioning, with the first volumes targeted for the end of January [which did happen] or early February. The 173,000 tonne/year Ziegler alcohol plant expansion, which includes a 30,000 tonne/year alumina unit and 30,000 tonne/year Guerbet alcohol unit, is expected early in the second quarter. The alumina unit, which is part of the Ziegler alcohol plant, will start with the Ziegler expansion early in the second quarter. Alumina, also known as aluminium oxide, is produced as a result from the use of aluminium as a catalyst to produce the alcohol. Commissioning of the Guerbet alcohols unit is expected following the Ziegler expansion, with volumes expected in early summer. The Guerbet unit will produce C12, C16 and C18 alcohols as well as longer-chain C20, C24, C24-26, C28 and C32 alcohols included in the standard Guerbet alcohol product slate.

On Monday 13th of January, Sasol reported a small fire on the site in Lake Charles Louisiana. Local media reported a loud boom, which apparently blew the hurricane doors off a fire department next door. No injuries were reported.

In related news, ICIS reported that US first quarter fatty alcohols contracts were assessed flat to up from the fourth quarter amid a sustained upswing in palm oil and feedstock palm kernel oil (PKO) costs over the last three months, as buyers begin first-quarter restocking efforts. Players that finalised negotiations earlier secured contracts skewed toward the low end of the posted ranges, while players that finalised negotiations late secured contracts toward the high end of the posted ranges.

Contracts also varied based on buyer size and and shipping point, with east coast suppliers and New Orleans, Louisiana, based suppliers facing higher logistics costs than those in the Houston, Texas, area. Single-cut C16 and C18 alcohols were heard to be more available relative to the C16-18 blend, limiting the upswing in the contract range. Single-cut alcohols tend to sell at a premium to blended cuts.

Demand is rebounding, with demand for the mid-cut C12-C15 alcohols especially strong relative to the C16-18 alcohols following maintenance among surfactants producers in the fourth quarter. Although demand is rebounding, it remains to be seen if the market will fully absorb higher costs. Sasol has delayed the startup of its alcohols expansion to the second quarter, which may keep synthetic alcohols inventories tight until the second-half of the year, further pressuring the market.

In the spot market, the upswing in PKO and other feedstock oil markets continues to put serious upward pressure on prices. One buyer who lost out on first-quarter volumes was heard to have bid in the 80 cent/lb DEL (delivered) range for mid-cut material in the US Gulf following a delayed shipment. Spot prices in the Gulf were heard no lower than the 70 cent/lb range. Q1 mid-cut C12-C15 alcohols were assessed up 4.5 cents/lb from the fourth quarter at 66-75 cents/lb  DEL (delivered) in the US Gulf. C16-18 alcohols were assessed 5 cents/lb higher on the high end at 77-85 cents/lb DEL US Gulf.

Meanwhile over in Europe, later in the month; European fatty alcohol first quarter contract prices rocketed amid strong increases in feedstock prices throughout the previous quarter. Values jumped €240/tonne on the low end and €310/tonne on the high end to €1200-1410/tonne FD (free delivered) NWE (northwest Europe).

Feedstock palm kernel oil (PKO) values spiked over the past few months. The sustained increases seen in recent months were due mainly to a rise in biodiesel mandates in Indonesia, as there is higher demand expected for palm products in Asia this year. Availability is healthy, with no production issues seen in the region. Demand has been fairly slow in January, with expectations that it will pick up further into the quarter. Some market participants are seeing lower demand from alcohol ethoxylates players in the first quarter, due to length in the ethoxylates market.

EO scrutiny continues: ICIS reports that a new project aims to improve air quality monitoring information for ethylene oxide (EO) in the US state of Georgia, according to an American Chemistry Council (ACC) statement. The project will collect, analyse and share the results as US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and state and local officials set safety standards and determine the best emission control technology. "Limited air emissions data from Georgia, as well as recent data released by the EPA regarding EO emissions in various areas around the country, raise questions about normal background levels of EO in the air," the ACC said.

"More research into levels of EO in the air is needed." As the blog noted in November representatives from the US states of Illinois and Georgia formed a bipartisan group to address the safety of EO emissions. The group's purpose is to urge the EPA to act.

Interestingly, according to a table of EO emitters put together by C&E News, using EPA’s TRI data, none of the top sources of EO emissions in the US are in GA or IL. See below. They’re in LA and TX (with one in VA)

EO did not have a great month as news of the Industrias Quimicas de Oxido de Etileno (IQOXE) ethylene oxide (EO) plant explosion filtered through the industry. As reported in Chemanager, the explosion killed one worker and initially injured eight others in the late hours of Jan. 14. The ensuing fire raged into the morning hours of Jan. 15 and a local hospital confirmed the death of a second worker from extensive burns later in the day. According to reports, the explosion, which occurred in an ethoxylation reactor, then damaged a tank filled with 20 kg of EO, and shockwaves from the blast caused a building to collapse 2 km away, killing another man. Authorities said no toxic chemicals were measured in the atmosphere.

IQOXE, which is owned by Spain’s CL Grupo Industrial, said it has opened an internal investigation into the cause of the blast. The explosion took place in a part the complex that had begun operations in June 2017 and had been operating normally up to then. The affected facility may be one of several plants belonging to bankrupt PET producer La Seda de Barcelona that were acquired by Cristian Lay, a manufacturer of designer jewelry, watches and cosmetics, for only €15 million in 2014.

By the way, some of the video online is quite horrifiying:

Does EO have a problem? Is it a PR problem which turns quickly into a trial lawyer problem? To some extent that is up to the industry. The other side is already mobilizing.

Notwithstanding this run of bad news for EO, IHS published a rather bullish outlook on ethoxylation as summarized in the graph below:

After swallowing a large chunk of Huntsman, Indorama has created a new division to integrate the ethylene oxide (EO) and propylene oxide (PO) assets acquired from Huntsman, ICIS reported. Integrated Oxide will have under its name the $2.1bn assets acquired from Huntsman, which also included production plants for methyl tertiary butyl ether (MTBE) and surfactants. The facilities are located in Port Neches, Chocolate Bayou, and Dayton in Texas, US, as well as Ankleshwar in India, and Botany in Australia. The acquisition was announced in August 2019 and finalised earlier in January. Former Huntsman executive Alastair Port has been appointed president of Integrated Oxide, effective 3 January. He will report to Dilip Kumar Agarwal, CEO of the Feedstock and PET businesses. From what I understand most of the Huntsman organization remains in place at the acquired business.

A fascinating piece in ICIS News, discusses the Coronavirus, which this week killed more people than SARS. Among other things the outbreak was predicted to be potentially good for surfactants (as more are used in hygiene and washing) but potentially very bad for the Chinese and global economy. So, hard to say really how to play this one. Except – be careful when travelling out there.

Right at the end of the month, ICIS’s talented Lucas Hall published an outstanding analysis of the Q2 picture for fatty alcohols. He notes that the downward correction in the oil palm complex since the beginning of the year, as well as emerging concerns regarding the ongoing coronavirus outbreak in China, have stalled early negotiations for US Q2 fatty alcohols. Feedstock crude palm oil (CPO) and palm kernel oil (PKO) costs have posted significant declines in January following a sustained uptrend in Q4, tracking decreased demand for edible oils in China during the Lunar New Year holiday and decreased demand for Malaysian palm oils in India amid a diplomatic dispute between the two countries.

Feedstock oil prices trended up in Q4 ahead of the rollout of increased biodiesel blending mandates in Indonesia and Malaysia at the start of the year. The outbreak of the coronavirus in China as players return to the market following the Lunar New Year festivities has exacerbated concerns, as a lockdown in cities in China as well as curfews and curbs in travel weaken demand for edible oils in the food industry and limit economic activity in the country.

Crude palm oil (CPO) and palm kernel oil (PKO) closed lower at $661.12/tonne and $809.73/tonne on 28 January, the first day of trading after the market resumed in Malaysia following the Lunar New Year break, reflecting losses of 9.88% and 11.59% respectively. Costs have since come down further, prompting US players to establish a more wait-and-see stance as they monitor developments in China and elsewhere. CPO and palm stearin prices have fallen less significantly than PKO, easing any downward pressure faced by the long-chain alcohols.

Buyers rejected offers for the mid-cut, C12-15 detergent range of fatty alcohols commonly consumed into the US surfactants market in the low-to-mid 80 cent/lb DEL (delivered) USG (US Gulf) range, shifting instead to a more hand-to-mouth approach as they monitor movements in palm oil. Players are also monitoring developments ahead of the completion of Sasol's fatty alcohols expansion in Lake Charles, Louisiana.

In other news, MFG Chemical (Dalton, Georgia) continued integrating its Pasadena, Texas, facility in 2019, as well as implementing upgrades to its two plants in Georgia and Texas, as reported by ChemWeek. The Pasadena facility was acquired by MFG in 2018. Improvements in 2019 included a new stainless steel reactor at a pilot plant in Dalton, Georgia, and upgrades at Pasadena including a 20,000-gallon reactor and new capabilities for existing reactors. Oilfield chemicals and water treatment are two of the company’s four growth drivers, in addition to dioctyl sodium sulfosuccinate (DOSS), a specialty surfactant, and anhydrides.

Finally, in news, only tangentially related to surfactants, P2 Science, of which your humble blogger is the CEO, reported the first close of its C-Round. The company brought in $12 Million and two new investors, one of whom is Chanel.

Yes, that Chanel, the one of perfume and handbag fame. This of course, is super-cool and a lot of new developments are slated for the coming year at our young company. I’m sure most of you are familiar with the BagHunter report showing that a Chanel handbag is one of the best investments you can make – right up there now with green chemistry.

OK – that was the end of the news. Now as promised last month, more on Neil Peart. What to write about the world’s greatest drummer in the world’s greatest musical group, while still being interesting and readable? I’m going to focus on the lyrics because, since joining the group after the first album, Peart, a reader and thinker, wrote all of Rush’s lyrics. These songs, to me, were a soundtrack to growing up and are still a robustly relevant soundtrack to life today. I’ll talk about just a few songs that really got me thinking.

There are a few key themes that run through Peart’s lyrics. These are i) the struggle of the individual against an overbearing state – and particularly, within that category, the evils of communism ii) the tensions between the head and the heart , between logical reason and illogical love and iii) it has to be said, there’s a healthy distaste for religion in his songs, something which always bothered me a bit.

Here’s the first song from Fly by Night (1975) the first album on which Peart appeared. We sample the live version from 1976 in Toronto.

’m not even going to comment on drumming, but honestly, the average 2 second drum fill from Peart is chock full of more goodness than a 10 minute drum solo by pretty much anyone else. In the lyrics, though you can already tell our lad’s been reading Ayn Rand and of course back then we all dutifully followed suit and got Atlass Shrugged etc out of the library. Interesting. Pure, harsh, objectivism, but still interesting.

Nonetheless, even after crediting the “genius of Ayn Rand” on one album, Peart was already driven to explore the role of the heart opposite the head. A pinnacle of this journey was the first side of the album Hemispheres, where Peart writes about the ancient struggle between the gods of love and reason for the possession of the hearts and souls of men. Here’s a video with lyrics.

Check out the incredibly percussive intro as Neil brings along Alex and Geddy especially from 1:57

If there was one thing pretty obvious early on with Peart, he really despised communism; not exactly a trendy view back then in that era of Che Guevara T shirts and red-star caps. A really crisp and shocking exposition of his views was captured in the song The Trees also from the Hemispheres album. Here’s the song and lyrics.

And now the trees are all kept equal, by hatchet, axe and saw”

Peart loved free will as much as he hated totalitarianism. This next song also hints at some of his problems with religion. Freewill.

“The stars aren’t aligned or the gods are malign. Blame is better to give than receive”

The greatest example of Rush music to me is 2112 off the album of the same name. This was the album that propelled Rush into autonomy (meaning it made enough money so that they did not have to listen to the record company telling them what to write any more). The song is about the struggle of a lone man against the overpowering state. Our hero discovers a banned guitar in a future totalitarian world and is dismissed as a troublemaker. The song leaves an enormous question mark, however. Peart starts with a quote from the sermon on the mount. “and the meek shall inherit the earth” but does he mean it literally or is it stated with irony? Then at the end of the song, it appears that our hero actually commits suicide, but that is not 100% clear. It seemed unfair and inappropriate to me, notwithstanding the fact that the song overall is a 20 minute, guitar-bass-drums, masterpiece.

“My spirits are low in the depths of despair. My lifeblood spills over”

So where to go from here. For me it takes Peart 40 years to close the loop on 2112. The last song on their last album. The Garden.

The measure of a life is a measure of love and respect. So hard to earn, so easily burned. In the fullness of time a garden to nurture and protect. “

I could go on forever on Neil Peart, but I hope this brief selection brought back some good memories. It did for me.

Thanks for reading.

2020 New Year’s Editorial

2020 – New Year’s Editorial

Note to Readers:    Neil Peart died last week, age 67. I’m sad, of course. Also reflective; as I look back, fondly, on 45 years of beautiful, original, technically brilliant and heartfelt music. Readers of the blog and the patient folks who have generously sat through my opening remarks at our conferences, know of my fascination, since the age of 15, with Rush. I love Rush. I remember a few years ago in Jersey City, when I started the day with a study of the evolution of one Rush song. We listened to (a cut from ) the first 1974 recording, then the 1976 live version – and I remember the look on some people’s faces as they thought “oh hell, he’s going to go through the last 40 years, two years at a time!” We didn't of course and the crowd stuck with me as I used some tortured logic to make all this relevant to our beautiful, original, technically brilliant – and heartfelt - corner of the chemical industry.

So it first seemed a bit inappropriate to publish the blog I had largely already written over Christmas for this editorial, about an artist that I don’t even like. But the message I have below is (I think) good and it’s relevant. So, we’re going to do it. There’ll be time in future blogs to explore the music and lyrics of Neil Peart. Especially the lyrics.

If you’re not familiar with these editorials you should know there is absolutely no surfactant news here. This post is for your entertainment and perhaps it may encourage you to think about some things. That’s it. So you can stop reading here if you came for the news. The December news blog is up and January will be published right after ACI.

This blog will be an exposition of the meaning of the following 68 second video. If this idea does not sound fun or interesting to you, then please stick with the news posts.

First a story that could have been true: Mother Teresa and Cardi B (an American rapper and star of the above video) walk into a bar. Cardi breezes right past the velvet rope and the, improbably bemuscled, slab-of-granite, bouncers, Mother T in tow, up the steps, past Beyoncé with barely a nod, kicks Justin Bieber out the way and delivers an impressive stream of invective and epithets at the now, visibly flustered host, who, responding with a barely audible “yes ma’am”, escorts the duo to the VVVIP area, created just for them, overlooking the pullulating dance-floor packed with not-quite A, B and C listers for their viewing pleasure. In a verbal fusillade that one might reasonably have expected to be directed at someone who just ran over your pet puppy, Cardi orders a drink, the words Moet and Hennessy just about discernible among the Anglo Saxon words of four letters and one syllable. Somewhat nonplussed, Mother T murmurs reassuringly to the quivering waiter, “glass of water, my dear boy, no ice, please”.

The next day, Cardi B and Mother T walk into City Hall. Mother T, with humble yet piercing smile affixed, Cardi in tow, totters obliviously through the metal detector, giggling as it goes off, marks a sign of the cross on the, now kneeling, police sergeant’s forehead, blesses the security guards’ rosaries, walks innocently through several layers of security into Mayor Giuliani’s office, where the US president and his VP, jumping up apologetically, offer their seats to our ill-matched protagonists and leave quietly. Mother T, with lips definitely moving but in a voice trained by years of silent prayer, gently enquires after the Mayor’s family and reminds him to keep saying both is morning and evening prayers. Then, chuckling, she mentions that the little sisters of the poor would really like free, unrestricted and reserved parking on the island of Manhattan. The mayor entreats Mother T to please accept this parking privilege for all 5 boroughs of the city as anything less would be deeply embarrassing to him. Mother T smiles. Cardi, jaw now literally on the floor, manages to cough out in her best first-holy-communion voice “What she said”.

These vignettes, of course, did not happen, although the meeting about parking between Mother Teresa and Giuliani (without Cardi), did take place.

But here’s what’s interesting to me: Two single women, humble beginnings, simple plan, steady execution, global impact. Mother Teresa and Cardi B have much common. Yes, they are radically different people operating differently in totally different fields as the vignettes above illustrate, but they have lived a similar story. It’s a story we can learn from.

I’d originally conceived of this blog as a letter to my colleagues at P2 on what we could learn from the life of Mother Teresa. Then, before I could write it, one of them sent me the Pepsi video. I changed the identity of the chief protagonist in the letter, from Mother T to Cardi B but the story remained the same. This blog-post is adapted from that letter.

Most readers know who Mother (now Saint) Teresa was. Cardi B, maybe not so much. Cardi B is a successful rapper, 3 number 1 singles, a number 1 album, a bunch of platinum records and winner of best rap album at the 2019 Grammy’s. Loads of other awards. By any relevant definition, she’s made it. That Pepsi video contains more than meets the eye here and there’s wads of meaning crammed into those 68 seconds. There’s so much to unpack, so...

First, let’s just observe that if you’re doing TV ads for Pepsi, you are there. You’re rich and getting richer, at an exponential rate. And it's a good rich (not drug-dealer rich, hedge-fund rich or slumlord rich) because one of the most valuable brands and admired companies on the planet is paying to be associated with you. The most recent estimate of Cardi’s net worth is only $12 Million, but honestly I can’t see it staying within 2 digits next year. Jay Z’s (another rapper) roughly $1Bn net worth is a more realistic target for Cardi B in the coming years.

What’s interesting though is that Cardi B came from a pretty low place in life quite recently. Now I guess I should caution you right here that if you’re inclined to do some internet research, Ms. B has not exactly led a G-Rated life, nor does she exactly sing nursery rhymes. End of trigger warning. So, as a Teenager, she worked as a cashier at the Amish Market in Tribeca, NY. She also lived with an abusive man (actually in the bloke’s mother’s apartment) on whom she depended financially, as her mother had thrown her out of the house. In order to earn some decent money and get free of this mammy’s boy wife-beater she took a job, erm.. dancing at a .. er… gentlemen’s nightclub. She vowed to save (not earn but actually save from earnings – big difference) $100,000 to invest in herself, and she did. Part of that investment, it must be said, was in dodgy plastic surgery, at 19 years old, to enhance those parts of the human anatomy which the Western consumer market most highly values. This compounded her earning power. Another investment was in an apartment, which she promptly rented out in order to secure some regular income. The goal was freedom and money was the tool to get it.

Next up for Cardi – Instagram. She thought this social media outlet could generate some traffic for her emerging investment property business. She attracted followers with selfie videos giving relationship advice and the odd joke. The first post was on July 14, 2015. Today she has 57 million followers. On the way to 57m she used this growing fan-base to book appearances for herself at nightclubs where she generated more buzz. She’s 23 at this point and not a note (beat?) of rap had yet passed her lips. She concludes there’s more out there than being a landlord and an Instagram “personality”. She invests in some studio time and makes a rap mixtape called… well never mind what it was called. Suffice to say that her work in the studio got her a small role on season 6 of VH-1’s “Love and Hip-hop” reality show.

The show purported to give viewers a look at how a bunch of young aspiring rap-stars struggle to make it big. Predictably it focused more on hook-ups, fights and bacchanalia (so I’m told. I didn't see it. I’ll never see it). Nonetheless this was a perfect vehicle for Cardi and she even achieved minor celeb status after a showdown with another cast member (in a delicious mélange of cultural metaphors, a Christian Louboutin red soled shoe was flung across the room). The storyline that the producers had for Cardi was the dumb (now former) dancer who couldn't sing, thinking she could have a rap career and failing at everything. A train-wreck of a woman with one talent (and it wasn't music). Cardi could have made this a pretty nice career; reality star (a la Snookie), instagram personality (and still packing nightclubs without singing a note – like a sort of minor league Kardashian) and – don’t forget Bronx / Queens landlord (like some other successful folks). But she had joined the show with one goal in mind, to launch a successful music career. The storyline written for her wasn't co-operating so she quit after two seasons to write her own storyline; leaving behind two huge things for her – TV fame and a decent paycheck.

Within a few months of leaving the show, Cardi released her first “mix-tape” (they’re not actually tapes, btw and “releasing” means putting the music yourself onto Instagram, Youtube, Soundcloud etc..), followed by volume 2 of, well the title’s not that important. Aided by her already huge and loyal social media following, these releases took off and she soon thereafter signed a deal with Atlantic (you know, of Rolling Stones, Aretha Franklin, Otis Redding and Led Zep fame). Great right? But not there yet. To get Pepsi-commercial rich and famous you need to be firmly in the mainstream. Mainstream breakout was to come with the release of her first single, Bodak Yellow (there’s a clean version but this has few original words left in it) followed by an appearance on the Wendy Williams show. Wendy is basically daytime TV royalty (that’s why you’ve never heard of her). She defines / reflects the culture; not the whole culture obviously but a very large money-spending part of it. This is like the debutante’s ball for the glitterati. This is the first rung on the ladder to a Pepsi commercial. This says, yeah you may have songs out there that talk in explicit terms about, well, thus and such, and use that word and the other word, strung together by a succession of those other types of (Anglo Saxon, four letter, one syllable) words, but you know just how far to push things in mainstream company and not one millimeter more. Like a Wylie E Coyote character you get way out over the 3,000 foot drop but always scramble back to terra firma. That is: Daytime. TV. Mainstream. Consumer-culture. Gold.

The song reached number 2 on the Billboard hot 100 (Billboard’s still a thing apparently). This was June 2017. 7 years on from the Amish market and the wife beater, 6 years from the dodgy plastic surgery, 2 years after the first Instagram post. In April 2018, Cardi released her first studio album on Atlantic and streaming sales promptly beat the prior record held by Beyoncé (a prominent member of the consumer market royal family). Does this look like an exponential growth curve to you? Small shallow steps (quit the market, start dancing) which show little promise beyond the immediate benefits, but you keep going and pretty soon you’re bigger than Beyoncé! I mean, it looked like she literally came out of nowhere. You’re at a sweet 16 or a barmitzvah in 2016 and you hear whatever dross teenagers liked back then. In 2017 all you hear is Cardi-B (clean versions if the parents have the foresight to demand it from the DJ). Today Cardi is effortlessly checking off every cultural milestone: The mansion with an indoor gun range, the private jet(s), the cover of Vogue, the Met Gala (and a dress that, IMHO, outshone the great Kim Kardashian’s), the rapper boyfriend (you haven’t heard of him) ,the daughter called Kulture, loadsa money and a Pepsi commercial. And I think you have to agree. Exponential. Self-made.

So what’s the point of all this? Do I like Cardi B? No. Do I like her music? No. Do I think she has made a positive contribution to society? No. Do I admire Cardi B? Hmmm. Do I love the story? Yes. Why? Because, stuck in a very low place, from which, sadly few people escape, she identified an objective (freedom), a tool with which to get it (money) and an absurdly simple plan (dancing, real estate and music). There’s millions of girls, and boys, out there right now with exactly that plan (minus perhaps the real estate) She executed the plan. That’s where most people fall down. Upon achieving a level of success of which few dream (VH-1 reality star for gosh-sakes!) - nope, not good enough. Keep executing toward the main objective – consumer market royalty. And when the rocket takes off (on the Wendy show), stay the heck on it. You know, if you look back, she had very little natural talent. You wouldn't have seen her in the Amish market back then and said to yourself that this girl’s going places. She had personality, obviously, and, in retrospect, a lot of drive and focus. The rest was created, from the resources she had at hand, by her.

You’ve realized by now. I see a lesson in the story. To me, the cool thing about Cardi is that she had four stories already written for her: Story #1: Battered girlfriend. Sad story. Lived by millions of women. Story #2: Dancer. Gets independence. Invests in a future. Could turn out OK. Story #3: Reality TV Star. Beyond most of her peer’s aspirations. Money, fame – the works! Story #4: in the 1% of the 1% of the 1% of the rap world. This is the story she chose to live.

As with Cardi, so with you. I know, it’s hard to envision. Think about it. This story is being lived out every day around the world by all sorts of people in all sorts of fields. It’s already been written. It just has to be lived. Cardi B and Mother T did. Maybe you should? I know what you’re saying (if you got this far). “I’ve got a job and a mortgage (maybe you took the job because you have the mortgage), a wife, a husband, and two American teenagers and tuition and a house in the suburbs whose utility bill could power a small to mid-sized country in other parts of the world.” And you’re right and that’s OK. This is an entertainment post, first and foremost . Maybe you just read this article for the pictures and that’s fine by me.

But think a bit more. Cardi saves $100K. You live (I know it’s un-American) way within your means, no Starbucks!, and do the same. Cardi gets the plastic surgery. You get an MBA or an accounting degree online or learn a foreign language on Coursera. Cardi gets on, then quits, the reality show (now I’m really stretching analogies to breaking point). You take the trophy job, knowing you’ll never make your home there but you’ll add a lot of value and learn a lot and part, friends. Cardi invests in herself and gets on the Wendy show. I dunno. You have the courage to pursue the story you have chosen for yourself not what has been written for you. You wanna run a company? You can do that right now. It might be a company of one to start with, HQ – your basement, but you can. You wanna change the world? Most of my readers are in North America and Western Europe. Merely by virtue of your physical location and time in history you have unprecedented opportunity to do that (Think about it. Google it). You have kids? Remember when they were like 6 and you got a card from them that said “best mam in the world” . That’s a story. They’re giving you a story. Imagine if you spent just one week, no, a day, just a single day, living that story. Wow right? It’s hard though. Easy to write. Hard to do. That’s why there’s only one Cardi and one Mother T. If you look at it like that you’re missing something. There’s millions of fields! Could you write a story which has you as the Cardi B of cosmetic preservative market research. Could you be the Mother Teresa of solids handling? What about the Cardi B of church 50:50 raffles.? See what I’m saying? Pick the story. Pick the field you want to live it in – and give it a go.

So we learned a lesson from the Cardi story. But, I know you guys and that’s not enough for you. There’s a more fundamental question you’re asking. The fact that she made it – what does that say about the society in which she made it? That’s our society I’m talking about. The one in which we work, play, raise families, vote, invent, celebrate every July 4th, you know, America. Is it a good thing that such a story can be written about mainstream success in our culture? Let’s take a very careful look at some of the lyrics that Ms B freely and openly proclaims to her listeners:

From Bodack Yellow – her mainstream breakout Wendy show hit:
Hah, it's Cardi, ayy
Said, "I'm the ****, they can't **** with me if they wanted to"
"I don't gotta dance"
Said, "Lil ****, you can't **** with me if you wanted to" (ooh)
These expensive, these is red bottoms, these is bloody shoes (ooh)
Hit the store, I can get 'em both, I don't wanna choose (bah)
And I'm quick, cut a ****** off, so don't get comfortable, look (ooh)

Yes – we’ve got the F, B and N words all packed into the first verse.

You get the picture right? and don’t kid yourself; these songs are not just 2AM club anthems, they’re playing at quinceañeras and bar-mtizvahs across the land.

If you study Cardi’s lyrics (which I’ve done so you don’t have to) – they’re basically about agency, the ability of a person to act as they wish. Fair enough, free-will, nothing wrong with that. I like that. But listen more closely and the focus is very much on sexual agency and the use of (almost exclusively) money and power to exercise such agency. And to me that is not good because it classifies some people as merely objects, as means to an end, parts of a machine whose sole purpose is to fulfill the needs of the operator of the machine. Not individuals.

One of the great achievements of western civilization has been the realization of each person as an individual, an agent with rights and not a mere object to be exploited. So should we care that in 2020 the musical messages pumped out by Cardi happen to be squarely in the mainstream? Not convinced? With caution, google Cardi’s GBM V1, her first mix-tape which was well established in the public domain before Pepsi invested in her as a brand spokesperson.

I often say in these blogs that “the culture is the culture” and you may not like it, but you live in it and do business in it and so you better get somewhat familiar with it. But is the “hey that’s the way of the world, better go along with it” attitude the right one when a mainstream message celebrates the idea of people as objects, not individuals. Taken to its tipping point in the 20th Century, this idea of people as objects in the greater machine, killed 10’s of millions in Stalinist Russia, Nazi Germany and Maoist China, among many others. So am I saying that Cardi is the next Stalin but with better nails and hair? Of course not; but ask yourself is there maybe an obligation to not just accept the culture when we see it veer off into dangerous and familiar territory.

Now I know what approximately half of you are saying: “Neil you’re just upset because it’s a girl that’s singing this”. You don't recall all this Stalinist- alarm nonsense about generations of maltliquormarinated misogynist male rappers who sang as bad, if not worse, songs. And it goes further back than rap. There were some album covers for certain 70’s testosterone metal bands that you cannot even find on google now (Scorpions fans; you know who you are). But now, a girl is singing this type of thing and it’s suddenly the end of Western civilization. There may be a point there. Maybe this Cardi/Pepsi video, for me just brought this thinking to the fore.

Here’s another thought. Let’s say you agree this music is, on balance, promoting a message that is not great. And, thought experiment, you could go back in time to that Amish market and talk to a young Cardi. Would you try to stop her leaving to dance in gentlemen’s clubs? What? and stop her from escaping a violent relationship? Convince her not to go into reality TV – and thereby prevent her from leaving “the stage”? Probably not, right? Because, freewill and self determination are hers as much as anyone else’s.

It’s not that easy is it? There’s a player in this drama we’ve not talked about much; Pepsi. Pepsi’s a really fascinating company. They’re an iconic brand and company – over 100 years old. Market Cap of $190bn on sales of $66Bn – that’s pretty huge. But that is not all – there are more great things about Pepsico. They are enourmously respected in business and society at large. In fact they are a media darling. Among the many awards they have won: Named among Ethisphere's World's Most Ethical Companies for the 13th consecutive year (2019), Named among America’s Most JUST Companies (2018), Acknowledged by Black Enterprise as one of the Best 40 Companies for Diversity (2018), Named among Corporate Responsibility Magazine's World's 100 Best Corporate Citizens (2018).. the list goes on and on. This aint Philipp Morris. This aint Juul. This aint Bayer/Monsanto. This company is the darling of the darlings. And at Christmas in 2020, Cardi B is the face of the brand. Is there anything to think about this?

Cynics may sneer that they are made for each other. Cardi corrodes the culture and Pepsi corrodes your teeth, the lining of your gut and your entire metabolism with a sugar-in-water product designed to be addictive to kids. I’ve talked about the beloved Pepsi quite a bit in recent years. The summary is this. If Pepsi disappeared today, what would happen? Nothing. If the whole soft drink industry disappeared – what? We’d all be a lot healthier for starters. If Stepan, Henkel, Exxon disappeared? Well let’s see how Western civilization looks without surfactants. Not that civilized.

I gotta wrap this up (even if only because I’m running out of Cardi pictures that I can use without breaking the blog’s G rating) . The jury’s still out for me on Cardi. I love the story. The message, I'm still wrestling with. And we do have an individual duty to shape the culture ourselves - by our actions, words and inactions. Don't forget; do nothing, fail to act and you still shape the culture.  When the CEO of Pepsi gets up in the morning, he knows what he has to do that day and he must know, at some level, the health effects of what that job is. When Cardi gets up in the morning, I don't know what she thinks. One thing I am clear on. When you get up in the morning – it should be fist-pumps in the bathroom mirror. And when you go to work in whatever part of our chemical industry, you should be getting high fives from the neighbours all the way down the street, in gratitude for providing the infrastructure on which our civilization runs. You should be getting a bloody ticker-tape parade on the way home in the evening for what you’ve done that day. Every day.

In my mind, with the original story, ending with a rallying cry of “Let’s be like Mother Teresa!” sounded at least plausible. Ending with “Let’s be like Cardi B!” is too much and too complex right now. So let’s just say: You know the stories already. Pick one, a really, really good one.

Happy New Year!

Surfactants Monthly – September 2023

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 10 years and we update it every single time. We have literally had successive generations of managers from companies attend. And, with every passing year, it seems like an increasing number of emails that I get, begin with “I took your course last year and….” That’s very cool, from my point of view.

The teacher: Me. Nothing is subcontracted to graduate students! The course is available live and exclusively on our proprietary online learning platform - fueled by the I.C.I.S. data powerhouse. Register here 🎓 ... Surfactants Business Essentials Course.

So – what else: As you probably gleaned from last month’s post, I am obsessed with AI – specifically in the field of AI/ML/SDL (Artificial Intelligence / Machine Learning / Self Driving Labs). So I think I’m going to write about it more in these blogs. Not about cool prompts and not about blog content creation; although for sure, I am fully expecting these posts to be largely written by AI with the next 18 months. The boring bits anyway. Witty aphorisms and charming references to 70’s Northern (English) arcana will be continue to be all mine. But that’s nothing unexpected. What I’d like to do here is to highlight one or two key breakthroughs in the AI/ML/SDL field and link them to the business of surfactants. So look out for that. They’ll be at the bottom, just ahead of the music section.

Another thing I’ve been thinking about a lot since last month is the How. In these blogs, we talk a lot about the what and the why (So and so built a new plant because they needed capacity in North America) but now much about How – that is How to be a better more effective manager. How to create a business where none existed before. How to fulfill your full potential. I see a gap. I think a lot about how to get the most out of the decreasing number of neurons in my brain but rarely if ever write about it. Is anyone interested? I’ve no idea but I’m going to take a tentative step into this area and perhaps by reader feedback you can let me know. This will be in its own clearly labelled section above the AI section.  

And finally: Of course, our razor sharp observations on popular culture will continue to suffuse the blog for your entertainment and distraction. And so I have to address this Ancient Rome business. There’s some meme going round that talks about how many times a day a man thinks about ancient Rome. I had no idea this was also an American thing. But having grown up in a town (in England) that had a Roman fort and that was not that far from (Roman Emperor) Hadrian’s wall, thoughts of Rome were and are, never that far from the surface. The best roads up in that part of the world were laid on the routes taken by Roman roads and they were straight – joining A and B by a line with the shortest distance. The Romans did not screw around! Another thing; it was pretty clear how things went pretty quickly to hell in a handbasket when  the Romans left. Buildings decayed. Roads fell into disrepair. Plumbing ceased to function. In short, Entropy did its inevitable thing without the Roman centurion to impose order. And that brings me to the another pop-culture question I’d like to introduce: How many times a day do you think about the second law of thermodynamics? For me – it’s a few times per day – sometimes on a weekend, occupying the whole day. Imagine my delight then, when I heard about the new book from the great Stephen Wolfram on the Second Law. I bought if of course. Apparently Wolfram has been thinking about the second law since he was 12 and now, 50 years later, he believes he understands it and so wants to share that understanding with the rest of the world. And I thought I was an Entropy nerd! I’ve started into it and it’s excellent. To put something together so rigorous and original, takes the discipline and perseverance of a Roman soldier. Well done Stephen.

NIce One Centurion!

Next up – The News – which is probably what you came for : This month, we’re starting with a long term view of prices in our field – and thereby, also providing a sneak peak into the sorts of trends we study in our Surfactant Business Essentials Course. Data provided as usual, courtesy of I.C.I.S.

Fatty Alcohols in South East Asia: (or Detergent Range Alcohols as they are more properly known).  Prices for 1214 dropped at the end of September below $1,300 / MT, in line with decreasing palm kernel oil prices. Subdued demand for household and personal products didn't help either. According to ICIS reporting, over 300 KMT/ yr of capacity is offline for repair and or maintenance. Other plants are running at reduced rates. The following chart shows almost 20 years worth PKO and 1214 pricing FOB Southeast Asia – demonstrating the very close correlation.

Tight Correlation

In the US, 1214 pricing is similarly under downward pressure, due to weak demand and historically high inventories. Pricing is running at around $1,600 / MT , slightly more than half of pricing this time last year. In Europe, pricing also is moving down at around $1,400 / MT at end of the month. As we reported previously, Wilmar declared force majeure on fatty alcohols at Rozenburg, Rotterdam, the Netherlands, in July. The plant is rated at 120,000 MT/yr capacity. The force majeure remains in place and a restart is not expected until November at the earliest.

In the US market – the influence of petrochemical alcohols is particularly strong due to large capacity at Shell and Sasol. Therefore we keep a close eye on the relative price of PKO (the feedstock for oleo alcohols) and ethylene (the feedstock for petro alcohols). The following graph shows that despite a recent uptick in ethylene and the continuing downtrend in PKO, the so-called PKO premium over ethylene remains in positive territory, as it has for all of the last 9 years and much of the last 20 years.  

As pricey as usual

In the US, Ethylene Oxide prices settled down for August around $1,275 per MT (58 c/lb). This despite tight supply following the July Dow Plaquemine incident. That plant is expected to be out for another 6 months, according to ICIS reporting. Demand, meanwhile is weak in line with consumer demand in end use markets overall. The following graph illustrates the volatile relationship between ethylene and EO prices historically.

More correlated than not

In Europe, meanwhile, EO prices touched Euros 1,480 per MT in line with higher ethylene.

LAB and LAS prices have actually trended up recently in Asia. LAB settled around $1,450 /MT  in SE Asia. Indian prices around $100 / MT more. Pushed up of course ultimately by upward pressure in the crude oil markets. LAS nudged up to around $1,250 / MT in SE Asia.

This graph shows the historically tight relationship between LAB and LAS pricing with the X representing the value in the equation LAS = LAB*0.75 = X (we explain a lot more in the course). For about the last year, X has been a bit tight historically, under $200 / MT as LAS manufacturers will no doubt attest.

Tough recent times for LAS makers

And if you needed any further reasons to keep an eye on crude here it is.

Convinced?

Continuing the news :

Coast Southwest: Big news published in the great HAPPI magazine. Coast Southwest acquired substantially all of the assets of the Paso Robles, CA, surfactant manufacturing facility from The Lubrizol Corporation. Currently, the plant manufactures surfactants used in a wide range of personal care and industrial products. A purchase price was not disclosed.

“This surfactant business is virtually in our DNA,” said Joseph C. Cimo, president of Coast Southwest. “I have had over a 30-year affiliation with this site under its present ownership and before that with prior owner Chemron Corporation. Acquiring Paso Robles is extremely complementary to our business strategy of geographic and functional expansion. We believe that Coast Southwest offers the best prospects for the long-term viability of the site, its employees and for the region economically.”

This acquisition follows the official opening of Coast Southwest’s new state-of-the-art corporate headquarters in Irving, TX.

“In a single month, we have completed the two most significant events in Coast Southwest’s 38-year history,” Cimo said. “Our third-generation business has grown from a regional chemical distributor with West Coast roots to a multi-location North American powerhouse. Our 105,660-square-foot headquarters becomes the center point of Coast Southwest’s strategy. The Paso Robles assets will allow Coast Southwest to improve its value chain position and assert its competitiveness in the marketplace."

Well, that is a big step in a good direction for Coast Southwest. From my recollection, the site is an excellent one and part of the machinery that propelled Chemron to a high quality / high service reputation in the surfactants industry. Best of luck to the new owners. !

Nice part of the world, Paso Robles. Google it.

Around the middle of the month ExxonMobil announced expanded chemical production at its Baytown, Texas (U.S.) manufacturing facility. The $2-B expansion is part of ExxonMobil’s long-term growth plans to deliver higher-value products from its U.S. Gulf Coast refining and chemical facilities.“With startup of these two new lines, ExxonMobil is delivering high-value materials for a variety of products that society depends on every day,” said Karen McKee, president of ExxonMobil Product Solutions. “We achieved excellent safety performance by leveraging our expertise to plan and execute large projects, while providing meaningful investment in the U.S. Gulf Coast.”

The new performance polymers line will produce 400,000 metric tons per year of Vistamaxx and Exact-branded polymer modifiers, which can enhance the performance of a broad range of chemical products used to make automotive parts, construction materials, hygiene and personal care products, and various packaging applications. Vistamaxx can increase the durability of consumer products like reusable containers to extend their useful life while also allowing for higher recycled content. Exact can help meet the growing demand in the auto industry for thinner, lighter weight parts that improve fuel efficiency.

Always loved this photo - Exxon Baytown

The new linear alpha olefins unit will produce 350,000 tons per year of Elevexx-branded products, marking ExxonMobil’s entry into the market. Linear alpha olefins are used in plastic packaging, high-performing engine and industrial oils and other applications. They’re also building blocks for surfactants, which reduce surface tension for cleaning and industrial uses, and drag reducing agents, which allow crude to flow through pipelines more efficiently. ExxonMobil maintained its investment in this project through the pandemic and related economic downturn. The company’s extensive project management experience and technology capabilities enabled the units to start up safely according to planned schedule. During construction, the project supported more than 3,500 jobs, and when fully operational, will directly employ 200 more people. ExxonMobil’s Baytown facility is one of the largest integrated and most technologically advanced refining and petrochemical complexes in the world. Founded in 1919, ExxonMobil’s Baytown area operations are located on approximately 3,400 acres along the Houston Ship Channel, about 25 miles east of Houston. They include a refinery, chemical plant, olefins plant, plastics plant and global technology center.

Interesting news from Lanzatech and Dow: LanzaTech Global, Inc. (NASDAQ: LNZA), the carbon recycling company transforming waste carbon into sustainable raw materials, has collaborated with Dow (NYSE: DOW) to introduce a new biodegradable surfactant to the home care market.  Dow’s surfactant, EcoSense™ 2470, is made using LanzaTech’s CarbonSmart™ technology and ensures immediate market entry, while maintaining high-performance standards and advancing sustainability with recycled carbon materials. Surfactants are a critical ingredient for creating the foam and cleaning action of many household cleaning and laundry products.

LanzaTech’s biorecycling technology works like a brewery: proprietary bacteria consume carbon-rich pollution from industrial facilities, such as steelmaking plants, and convert it into CarbonSmart™ chemicals, such as ethanol. This ethanol can be converted into ethylene oxide, and subsequently used to produce surfactants.

This recycled carbon-based surfactant, marketed by Dow as EcoSense™ 2470, has versatile properties suitable for diverse home care applications.  “The capacity to provide cleaning solutions made from recycled carbon with outstanding effectiveness is a distinguishing factor that significantly influences the purchasing decisions of household consumers,” said Farooq Alam, Global Strategic Marketing Director, Dow Home Care. “EcoSense™ 2470 underscores our dedication to eco-conscious surfactant manufacturing, serving as the gateway to a sustainable future. It sends a resounding message to both home care brand owners and consumers that sustainability and superior performance work hand-in-hand harmoniously.”  “There is enough carbon above ground to make all the things we need,” said Jennifer Holmgren, CEO of LanzaTech. “We have been active in the ethoxylates space for several years, converting ethanol to surfactant ingredients, and with now Dow, our collaboration will enable us to greatly expand our reach in this market, which was valued at $19 billion in 2022.  In this way, we can pave the way for recycled carbon home care products that deliver both sustainability and product quality. There is no need for compromise when doing good for the planet!”

The official launch of EcoSense™ 2470 will take place during a presentation at the Innovation Forum with Dow experts hosted during the SEPAWA ® Congress , held from October 26 – 28 in Berlin, Germany.

More big news from our good friends Ballestra (disclosure - the company has been a long-term client of mine). On Linkedin (only for now) they published the following: Introducing the NEW BALLESTRA R&D Pilot Plant renovated with the most updated TECHNOLOGIES to perform validation or product TEST on SULPHONATION/SULPHATION by SO3 (from 1 to 200 lt), Spray DRYING (up to 100 kg/h), PRILLING/COLD SPRAYING (up to 20 kg/h), GRANULATION continuous (up to 100 kg/h) and batch, Organic Chemical Synthesis (Esterification, Condensation, Quaternarization, Amidation,  …), SAPONIFICATION, EXTRUSION, ETHOXYLATION-PROPOXYLATION (up to 150 lt/batch), Liquid & Powder Detergent and their intermediate manufacturing and much more …​
​
BALLESTRA R&D works actively and closely with customers through joint development partnership programs based on strict confidentiality to develop new ideas, reliable processes, and products in demanded quality and yield, from initial laboratory study to pilot plant scale-up test until full industrial scale.​

Everything you need to get into a grow a surfactants business

Finally – Why does this Indian lake foam so much? Is the delightful headline to an article in the Asian Scientist magazine. Apparently, Rains dissolve surfactants bound to lake sediments causing foaming in Bellandur lake in Bengaluru, Southern India.  Hmm .. The lake has problems beyond surfactants. Bellandur Lake receives untreated sewage far beyond its capacity to break it down and has depleted oxygen that keeps surfactants in the system. In a vicious cycle, this problem has worsened over the years. Foaming has also been witnessed in other lakes in the city such as Varthur Lake. “We are planning sustainable water treatment strategies. The first step is to increase the oxygen levels in the lake. You can either add algae that can increase it or add treated water with higher dissolved oxygen” said Reshmi Das, the lead author of the lake study and a graduate researcher at IISc.

It happens, OK. I'm not going to gloss over it.

End of News: Start of the AI/ML/SDL Section

For the material here, I’m going to pull largely on publications connected to the University of Toronto’s Matter Lab, with which I have had the recent pleasure of collaborating.

This headline caught my attention: VirtualFlow 2.0 - The Next Generation Drug Discovery Platform Enabling Adaptive Screens of 69 Billion Molecules[1]. Here’s a portion of the abstract: Early-stage drug discovery has been limited by initial hit identification and lead optimization and their associated costs (1). Ultra-large virtual screens (ULVSs), which involve the virtual evaluation of massive numbers of molecules to engage a macromolec-ular target, have the ability to significantly alleviate these problems, as was recently demonstrated in multiple studies (2–7). Despite their potential, ULVSs have so far only explored a tiny fraction of the chemical space and of available docking programs. Here, we present VirtualFlow 2.0, the next generation of the first open-source drug discovery platform dedicated to ultra-large virtual screen ings. VirtualFlow 2.0 provides the REAL Space from Enamine containing 69 billion drug-like molecules in a "ready-to-dock" format, the largest library of its kind available to date. … We demonstrate a perfectly linear scaling behavior up to 5.6 million CPUs in the AWS Cloud, a new global record for parallel cloud computing. Due to its open-source nature and versatility, we expect that VirtualFlow 2.0 will play a key role in the future of early-stage drug discovery.

A key theme emerging from the recent AI workshop we held in Toronto related to end-to-end automation and co-ordination in a self-driving-lab environment. This paper introduces a formalized architecture for achieving this: ChemOS 2.0 an orchestration architecture for chemical self-driving labs.[2]  The idea is in part explained in the abstract thus:  “…. we introduce ChemOS 2.0, an orchestration architecture that efficiently coordinates communication, data exchange, and instruction management among modular laboratory components. By treating the laboratory as an "operating system" ChemOS 2.0 combines ab-initio calculations, experimental orchestration and statistical algorithms to guide closed-loop operations…”

A more practical paper is Digital pipette: Open hardware for liquid transfer in self-driving laboratories[3] . Here the authors note: “Although many pipettes are available for human scientists, robots cannot manipulate these pipettes due to the limitations of current robot gripper morphology. We propose an intuitive yet elegant design for a 3D-printed digital pipette designed for robots to carry out chemical experiments. Performance-evaluation experiments were carried out liquid transfer tasks. Our results show that robots with digital pipette could transfer liquids within 0.5% error. This error is comparable to the baseline set by commercially available human-handled pipettes.”

For those worried about the role of Humans in the brave new world of AI/ML/SDL, there is a paper published as a preprint this August- HypBO: Expert-Guided Chemist-in-the-Loop Bayesian Search for New Materials[4], which notes in part “Our proposed method, which we call HypBO, uses expert human hypotheses to generate an improved seed of samples. Unpromising seeds are automatically discounted, while promising seeds are used to augment the surrogate model data, thus achieving better-informed sampling. This process continues in a global versus local search fashion, organized in a bilevel optimization framework. We validate the performance of our method on a range of synthetic functions and demonstrate its practical utility on a real chemical design task where the use of expert hypotheses accelerates the search performance significantly.”

Humans in the decision-making loop. But for how long?

Tell me if these abstracts and links are helpful – or too academic. Let me know.

Next Section: The How. This month, I’d really like to get some feedback on what I’m thinking about our surfactant conferences going forward. No matter if you’ve been to scores of our events or are just considering your first one. I’d really like to get some input if you can spare a moment.

Our conference focus has been to tell the attendees what is going on in surfactants and advise them on what to do about it. This has been very successful. However, we  have rarely if ever touch on how to do it. The how involves things like communication, leadership, management, innovation, entrepreneurialism, motivation, networking – the many softer skills that business owners and managers need – whether in surfactants or anywhere else.  Pretty much the only place these subjects have been addressed has been in my opening remarks at the beginning of each conference.

What I’m thinking about is to build in sessions or a separate module on the how subjects – with a surfactant flavor. My sense is that the space is fairly open. There are mega-stars of self-improvement like Tony Robbins and Jocko Willink, but for a manager in surfactants area, who wants to learn what is going on and what to do and how to do it, where do they go? Maybe there’s an opportunity for our events to be the one-stop shop for the what and how of the business of surfactants? I’m open to ideas and thoughts. Everything is on the table, fitness, nutrition, creativity, productivity. Your feedback will guide the future of the events… and this blog.

Ready to fulfill your potential?

And finally – the music. I almost feel obliged to write about Taylor Swift because everyone else is. It occurs to me that I can not name or hum a single Swift song. I’m proud of that, although I suspect many blog readers are in the same boat. What does that say about our society, I wonder? Our divided polity, our fractured democracy, our salad-bowl not melting-pot? No idea and don't really care, you’ll be relieved to know. Ritchie Blackmore, though. Different story. He’s appeard in our blog countless times. His chords and solos have accompanied many great episodes in my personal life. I’ll go back to Deep Purple’s cover of Joe South’s Hush on their Shades album in 1968. Here’s a truly horrible video from what looks like the UK’s Top of the Pops from back then. Even then though you can feel the massive talent and fury lurking in Ritchies guitar.

Next up from the Book of Taliesyn, released a few months later, the instrumental, Wring that Neck. Only a band as huge as Deep Purple, could surely contain the talent and egos of Jon Lord and Ritchie. Note the foreshadowings of Highway Star and 16th Century Greensleeves buried in there … hear them?

I’ll skip the eponymous album and go to In Rock – the masterwork – the literal and figurative Mount Rushmore. And of course the gargantuan first song (long version) Speed King. Again the interplay of Lord and Blackmore – incredible..

Now let’s go to Machine Head because, well if you were alive in 1971, you know why. This album defined heavy rock. So the opening track is interesting to me. We’re going to listen to the live version of the aforementioned Highway Star. It suggests to me an unlikely delayed gratification, if you like, on the part of Blackmore, whose persona more usually matched that of petulant teenager than gracious world champion. Consider this. How does the opening track (as we pull it here ) from their first live album go with a keyboard solo first? Blackmore’s frustration is palpable as he finally gets to do this thing at 4:10.

Also on Machine Head, of course, Smoke on the Water. Here’s a cool vinyl version.

We’re not even done with this album yet. What about Space Truckin’?

Here’s two versions: first the original from the album

and now the truly monstrous (in a good way) live version from Made in Japan

OK – I could go on and take in all the later work with Rainbow and various solo efforts, but you can do your own research, I suppose. I just want to leave you with 16th Century Greensleeves by Rainbow. This live version exemplifies the contained rage of the Blackmore chord and solo. Nothing quite like it. And a hat-tip to RJ Dio who more than manages to keep up the intensity. I saw this performed live at Newcastle City Hall, 1979 the night before my Chemistry mock A-Level (google it). Still got an A. The peak of my chemicals career by far.

So, that’s it. I usually don't ask much of you in these blogs  but this month, we’ve got 3 things for you to do.

1. Register for or forward info on the Surfactants Course
   
   

2. Give me some feedback on the AI/ML/SDL stuff above
   
   

3. Tell me what you think about the “How” idea above.

Thanks

Nei

Surfactants Monthly – August 2023

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 a widely accepted practice was adopted by his employer, thus giving him every Saturday off. It was a great day in our house. The garden never looked so good and the family never went on so many outings and picnics and whatnot. Me? I’ve never been down a pit although I’ve worked plenty of Saturdays – but not because anyone told me to.

What powered this transition from Dickensian to Dignity in a few generations? Revolutions: The energy revolution, industrial revolution, computing revolution, data revolution, social revolutions. The next revolution is the Intelligence revolution, meaning the price of intelligence is getting cheaper. In the same way that mechanical innovation replaced 9 year olds in the pit, and got the coal out of there, faster, cheaper and more safely and completely,  AI can alleviate millions from drudgery and do things similarly better and cheaper. Do this right and humans as individuals and a species can focus more on fulfilling their potential for wisdom and spiritual enlightenment, if they so choose. Someone in the workshop (frankly I wish it was me, but it wasn't ) coined the phrase “Everything is chemicals / Chemicals are everything” and so why shouldn't we be looking to make them better, faster, cheaper, safer and more sustainably with the aid of technology. That was the aim underpinning the workshop which pulled together leaders in industry, consumer goods, finance and academia for a pre-competitive planning session, the results of which should, if pursued right, bring the benefits of a happy Labor day to many more.  

Dickensian no more....

Two other thoughts on Labor Day. First, I like it better than May Day, which we had in Europe. May Day, to me, was too closely aligned with a movement which killed 10’s of millions of people through coercion. Not a good look for labor. Second, I went to high school in a town with a number of private schools each with their own, usually Latin, motto. I remember one in particular Labor Omnia Vincit – Work conquers all. The dour slogan matched by the dark earthen-brown of the uniforms. I genuinely felt sorry for those kids as I imagined them grinding in cowed silence through their lessons under the humorless watchful eye of camp-guard teachers. Our own Catholic boys’ school’s motto was the less foreboding Deus Lux Nostra – God our light; matched by a much cooler black and gold uniform. And while we no doubt labored under equally humorless overseers, it seemed OK because, well, God was our light and so it really didn't matter, did it? Of course the ultimate school motto in my view, was Amor Omnia Vincit – Love conquers all. A delicious middle finger to the work-conquers-all regime! Those kids surely had it made. No need to work, just love all day. In 70’s teenage boy epistemology, love differed not at all from sex. It took me a few more years to realize that, love needed work to make it last and work needed love in order to really do your best.

In Matthew Chapter 11, Jesus notes “Come to me all who labor and are burdened and I will give you rest”, implying  that the opposite of labor is rest or the antidote or cure for labor is rest. Seems about right. But then what about love?  Well, if you accept that the alleviation of another’s burden is an act of love, then the “cure” for the burden of labor, if you like, is love. So, yeah work gets stuff done, no doubt and it may indeed conquer all in the secular realm. But, by alleviating the burdens of work, love actually conquers all, overall. Happy Labor Day!

This one won't get old..

August was a very light news month in the world of surfactants and so I’m going a bit further afield to glean some interesting nuggets for you to read:

Mid-cut fatty alcohols enjoyed (?) a quiet summer as prices edged down on weak demand. US prices for 1215 alcohols stayed around $1,645 per MT according to analysis by  ChemAnalyst.

In the US ethylene oxide market, some activity. Following the Dow, Plaquemine explosion last month, the EO unit is expected to be down for at least 6 months according to the company. Despite the market shortage of EO, prices have ticked up only modestly due to depressed demand.  According to OPIS, a Dow Jones company, The Plaquemine site covers 3,300 acres and includes 23 manufacturing plants, including two olefins units with annual ethylene production capacities of 1.245 billion lbs and 2.35 billion lbs, along with several polyethylene units that produce linear low-density polyethylene and low-density polyethylene grades. The two EO-focused units at Plaquemine consume an estimated 233,000 metric tons per year of ethylene from the site's olefins plants. On a daily basis, this is a total of about 1.4 million pounds of ethylene. If only Glycol 2 is shut, this consumption figure is reduced by half.

Consumers looking a bit depressed

A big shout-out is overdue here to the AOCS (American Oil Chemists Society) who put together an impressive series of events and publications, including the great INFORM. The September Issue is all about surfactants. No reader of this blog has any excuse for not being a member of AOCS and having access to this journal. The issue covers, among other things, the use of  computational platforms that analyze and predict the toxicity of chemicals. There’s a wealth of data, spanning decades of research, on the biodegradability and toxicity of various compound that is now being used in new chemical research in a computational framework. Super- cool. Also in the September edition, an article by George Smith (yes, theGeorge Smith) about bio-surfactants. Worth a read.

Check it out

Also there’s a great analysis in INFORM of the revised European regulations covering detergents and surfactants. Hey, hey, don’t skip this bit! I know, that even I have been guilty in the past, of calling regulatory stuff boring. I was a mere youth back then. Intelligent but not yet wise. Now armed with the benefits of both intelligence and wisdom, I see the bigger picture and, as INFORM so clearly declaims, it’s this: The detergents industry accounts for approximately 4.2% of the production value of the total European chemicals sector in 2018. The total market value of the European detergents industry in 2020 was € 41.2 billion. The manufacturing of products for the whole market that includes both consumer and professional products involves around 700 separate facilities throughout Europe. Regulation (EC) No 648/2004 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 31 March 2004 on detergents (‘the Detergents Regulation’) lays down the rules that detergents need to comply with in order to be placed on the EU market. The revised rules cover new innovative products like detergents containing micro-organisms and new practices like the refill sale of detergents. The new rules also introduce a digital labelling and a product passport for detergents and surfactants. I found this to be particularly interesting and so I went to the source document from the EU (thankfully still published in English) here.  

Here is a snippet direct from the EU proposal: “To make this regulation future-proof, this proposal replaces the EU declaration of conformity set out in Decision 768/2008/EC with the obligation for detergents and surfactants to have a product passport  demonstrating compliance with the requirements of this Regulation. The product   passport will be connected through a data carrier to a unique product identifier, and meet the same technical requirements for a product passport under the ecodesign for sustainable products regulation27. The reference of the product passport must be included in a Commission central registry that will be set up under the ecodesign for sustainable products regulation, and this information must be presented at customs.”

I actually kinda like this digital passport idea. Here’s another thought that springs to mind. The use, overuse or misuse of surfactants and detergents has killed how many people? 8 in the last 10 years. According to Wikipedia. OK. And the number of deaths from the use, overuse or misuse of sugar? 184,000 (per year!!) according to analysis by Mozzafarian et al in the journal Circulation. Let’s say I’m off by a factor of 100 in each direction. Still not even close. And, yes of course, there is the environmental impact of detergents that the regulations are seeking to address. Environmental damage is the classic case of the public cost of private profit. The sugary-drink industry is another such case where the companies that design, make and market addictive products to kids enjoy nice profits. The costs associated with those profits however, are spread across the public, first to the direct consumers whose lives are cut short, and then more broadly to society that bears the medical costs of care and the costs of the foregone human potential of the sick and the dead afflicted by these products.  Think about it. Private profit and public cost is a deadly combination – in any industry. Oof – end of sermon.

Beware..

Something else. Readers have probably figured out that I’m a bit besotted at the moment with AI. So.. what about AI and surfactants. Anything there? A bit for sure, but not as much as there will be in the coming 5 years and I personally want to experience and even drive as much of that as I can. Stay tuned, here, for more in the coming weeks. So – anyway, AI and surfactants – a non-representative sampling of cool things - with footnotes and all. No extra charge..:

Cool AI..

One of the first studies that demonstrated the potential of AI in surfactant synthesis was published in 2002 in the Journal of Physical Chemistry[1]. Neural networks were used to predict the surface tension of surfactants based on their molecular structures. Cool tool for surfactant design.

More recently, The Journal of Chemical Information and Modeling[2] in 2019, reported that artificial neural networks were used to optimize the synthesis of bio-based surfactants. Neural networks were able to identify the optimal synthesis conditions, to make highly efficient and biodegradable surfactants.

In the area of surfactant applications, A study, published in the Journal of Colloid and Interface Science[3] in 2011, used genetic algorithms to optimize the composition of surfactant mixtures. The algorithms were able to identify optimal surfactant mixtures with improved properties, such as lower surface tension and higher stability; suggesting new applications for surfactants in cosmetic and personal care, the oil and gas, food and other area.

Deep learning algorithms, such as convolutional neural networks (CNNs), have been used to predict surfactant applications. In a study published in the Journal of Chemical Information and Modeling[4] in 2018, CNNs were used to predict the critical micelle concentration of surfactants based on their molecular structures, providing a promising approach for the design of new surfactants.

In a nuanced analysis published in the Journal of Physical Chemistry[5], the authors ask Can machine learning predict the phase behavior of surfactants? With the data set used (which is the most comprehensive openly available one for this type of study to the best of our knowledge), the answer is “yes”, but the predictions can be improved. The authors identified three areas in which data provided to the ML classifiers warrants further development, i.e.: improving the data bias in surfactant phases observed, building better training data with respect to the chemical space (i.e., different surfactants) and providing more comprehensive feature space (i.e., relevant chemical characteristics).

I know this is getting rather academic, so here’s a press release from a company called De3.ai. I have literally just stumbled across them and so imply no endorsement or otherwise via their inclusion in the blog. Apparently, De3.ai and Biosurfactants LLC plan on building a Rhamnolipid Biosurfactant facility in Tampa, FL. Using artificial intelligence algorithms, De3.ai can determine the exact application to eliminate contaminants and microbes from environments with no carbon footprint and no residual effects on the environment after application. Rhamnolipid Biosurfactants are chemicals secreted from bacteria that have many applications including breaking down the cell walls of pathogens. Interesting. Let’s see.

There’s more. In 2006 the Society of Petroleum Engineers[6] published an analysis showing the use fo AI to predict the surfactant loadings needed to optimize enhanced oil recovery.

And more: A pre-publication on the SSRN (Social Science Research Network) website[7] concludes that Chemometrics/Machine Learning methods such as Blind Source Separation (BSS) are powerful tools for extracting signals from complex mixtures. These techniques have been successfully applied to several detergent mixtures for various household applications. The combination of spectral databases of surfactants and mixtures has enabled the identification and quantification of surfactants in these complex mixtures.

There’s a bunch of review papers out there and honestly it’s hard for me to recommend any in particular. There’s an old one from 2018 in Nature[8] that highlights the usefulness of publicly accessible databases that I like.

There’s also what seems like a decent review in the Journal of Chemical Sciences from last year[9]. It’s also free to access here. Some of the figures are quite accessible.

Kinda getting this one...

Others not so much

Gotta read the article to get this one...

Finally, this slow news month: Researchers at UC Santa Barbara, have reported an improved catalytic method for converting waste polyolefins into alkyl aromatics – for subsequent use as surfactant feedstocks. Thus enabling a potential detergent bottle to detergent conversion. The original paper can be found here https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chempr.2023.05.017 . Very cool. Not close at all to commercial status but intriguing nonetheless. I wish them well.

One good use for empty bottles

Music this month? Hmm… well the abovementioned Toronto AI workshop called to mind this classic from, of course, Rush. Electricity? Biology? Seems to me it’s Chemistry. (Notice the cityscape!)

You know, that song, in my mind, always was paired with this one from Rush, from Moving Pictures, the under-recognized Vital Signs. There is so much in this one; an early Rush reggae song – just soak in the guitar and the bass. And the lyrics – for me address the beginning of human life and a precondition for life – deviation from the norm, which they conflate with elevation and escalation from the norm. A prescription for human development. :

That’s it for this month. By the time you read this, the summer will have officially ended in the US (labor Day) and work starts up again in earnest. Often feels more like a new year than January. Have a great year ahead; filled with your own human development - and love.

[1] Wu, X. G. Wang, “Artificial Neural Network Model for Predicting the Surface Tension of Nonionic Surfactants”, Journal of Physical Chemistry B, Vol. 106, No. 11, 2002, pp. 2777-2782.

[2] Chen, L. Zhang, X. Cui, “Optimizing the Synthesis of Bio-Based Surfactants Using Artificial Neural Networks”, Journal of Chemical Information and Modeling, Vol. 59, No. 9, 2019, pp. 4661-4669.

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Bonus Blog Post – Independence Day 2023

July 4th. I’m sitting on the front porch with a coffee and the paper about 7.30AM and a US Postal van pulls up. Guy gets out with a small brown box and fiddles with a phone and a barcode or something on the box, then walks up the drive. He looks tired. Me too, probably, but he looks a bit frazzled, which I probably don’t. I’m thinking – It’s July the bloody 4th and this guy’s out delivering packages and one of them is to my house. I feel a little guilty honestly, because of two things – one is just that he had to get up this morning when his wife or girlfriend was still asleep and he had to remind her again that he's working this morning – when will he be back – dunno – depends on how many packages – my parents are coming at 2 so you better be back by then – I dunno right I just dunno - depends. I didn't have to get up, I’m just up reading the paper, thinking big thoughts about stuff, you know, Ukraine, AI, interest rates, stuff like that. The other reason I’m guilty is – the package. What about it? It’s hardly what you might call – essential. I mean look – if it was life-saving medication arriving just in time, well fine. If it was even a super-important document that had to be signed “in hard copy with wet ink with a blue pen” to enable a massive amount of money to get where it’s supposed to be to pay people their salaries and such – well OK then. But it wasn’t those things. It just wasn’t frankly that important. It was vitamins OK – shipped from some place in PA – and it was cuttingly obvious from the livery on the box, that’s what it was. No-one was going to be even mildly inconvenienced if this box showed up on July 5th, 6th or 7th or not at all. No-one.

I get up to meet the dude halfway, smiling. I’m thinking though - do I try to make it seem like I’ve been waiting for this thing to arrive – thank goodness it’s here! In fact that’s why I’m even sitting out here.. waiting for this box. Nah that would seem disingenuous. In fact it is disingenuous. And it’s obvious, way too obvious. Putting on that act would diminish us both, I think – him more than me though, probably. I put out my hand. He places the box in it.

Cheers man. How are you doing?

I’m working, July 4th, so…

Yeah I know, working right.. July 4th – good luck man

Thanks man.

He gets in the van, winds down the window and waves as he drives off. I wave back. Why did I say good luck. ? Good luck with double or triple time for this crummy shift? (I have no idea). Good luck getting back at 2 for the girlfriend? Good luck just getting these boxes into the right hands when most people are sleeping late and literally could not care less if the box is there today or tomorrow or never. Good luck making it through the next 30 years of your time not being your own but the healthcare’s good (again, no idea)

I sit back down on the porch and gaze out at the suburban idyll and get back to thinking big thoughts. Dude doesn't need luck. He needs a culture change. A big one. Like, when did it become necessary to deliver vitamins on July 4th? Not only that, really, I mean, when did it even become OK for that to happen? When was it acceptable to mobilize the power and resources of the federal government to get a box of bloody vitamins to a house in the suburbs on July the frickin’ 4th? When, really, and whose idea was it and how is that just fine with everybody? Everyone’s like – Oh there’s Billy the postman on his rounds, delivering vitamins to needy customers on Independence Day- what a fine fellow! No actually they’re not because one they don't care; two they’re still asleep; and three if they’re not asleep, it’s kind of a mild annoyance to have to deal with this guy delivering stuff and trying to decide if you have to feign excitement and relief at this box arriving.

I’ll go out on a limb here and say that something important happened on July 4th. And so the holiday’s a good one to have. Back in England we would say things like – yeah the Yanks have a great standard of living but the quality of life, you know, the culture, is not as good as we have it here. 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. But the culture though.. the culture apparently says it’s OK to have a bloke get out of bed, leaving behind a pissed-off girlfriend who’s gonna cut him off for a month or more if he’s not back in time to grill burgers for her mam and dad, and drive around out there in this dinky little white van delivering vitamins and shit to people who just don’t care – on a holiday that commemorates something pretty bloody civilization shaping. ‘Cos you know the other thing we would say about the Yanks back then, in more generous moments, was that if it wasn't for them, we’d all be goose-stepping around with our right hands in the air. And that really means – if it wasn't for that declaration on July 4th.

So what am I saying? Give the dude the day off! Of course, but more than that – is there a way that it’s actually not really OK to even think about or suggest that he not have the day off? Is there a way that merely considering the mobilization of an arm of the federal government to deliver vitamins to the burbs on July 4th before even the lycra-clad soccer-moms have begun their power-walking down tree-lined streets, is as uncool as, say, I dunno, smoking or drinking and driving or whatever? Is there a way to bring about a culture change by weighing in the balance the right to have a box on your doorstep on a day the world changed vs the importance of that change and the need to remember it – and finding that the box is really empty?