Comment by Riaz Haq on April 17, 2021 at 8:09am

Engro to establish petrochemical plant
Unit will help slash country’s chemical imports, boost exports

https://tribune.com.pk/story/2293972/engro-to-establish-petrochemic...


Engro Corporation, a diversified group of companies, has announced that it will undertake advance studies for setting up a manufacturing plant in the petrochemical sector at an estimated cost of over $1 billion, which will slash Pakistan’s chemical imports and give a push to exports.

The conglomerate intends to establish a plant for the manufacturing of polypropylene resin, which is used in making plastic bags for carrying and supplying fertiliser and sugar to the market, confectionery wrappers, plastic pipes and other construction fitting material, film and sheet.

“We are pleased to announce that the board, in its meeting held on April 8, 2021, has approved an amount of up to $31.4 million (approximately Rs4.8 billion) towards conducting engineering, design and technical studies including a front-end engineering design (FEED) study in relation to the PDH-PP (propane dehydrogenation-based polypropylene) project,” Company Secretary Shomaila Loan said in a notification to the Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX) on Friday.

“At present, Pakistan meets local requirement for the chemical by importing approximately 500,000 tons a year,” Engro Corporation President and CEO Ghias Khan told The Express Tribune in an interview in December 2020.

The company was considering setting up a global-scale plant with installed capacity of 550,000-750,000 tons a year, he said and added that the estimated cost of the project could be around $1-1.2 billion.

The demand for the chemical is growing at 7.5% per annum. Keeping in view the project studies, arrangement of financing, potential investment partners (if considered) and construction, the plant would consume six to seven years for development and start of commercial production, he said.

“We may arrange financing for the project in two years from the time the board gives its go-ahead for the plant,” he said.

“The company will seek investment opportunities in this area, which creates avenues for both substituting imports and enhancing the export potential, which will help in building foreign currency reserves of the country,” said a company notification issued in April 2019. Khan said that the company would import raw material (propane gas) to produce polypropylene resin locally.

“The project will save Pakistan a net $250-300 million annually,” he said. Besides, the company might consider exporting the surplus production. Neighbouring country China was a big importer of resin globally, he added.

“Results of these studies, when completed, are expected to lead towards the final investment decision in relation to this project,” Loan said in the notification.

“The decision will also be based on a conducive policy environment and arranging the right mix of debt and equity partners at such time.”

The corporation’s share price dropped 3.08%, or Rs9.44, to close at Rs297.49 with trading in 1.3 million shares at the PSX.

----------------------

KBR, Inc. KBR announced that it has entered into an agreement with JS Energy Limited. Per the agreement, KBR’s K-PRO™ Propane Dehydrogenation (“PDH”) technology will help JS Energy to convert propane into propylene for a PDH project in Pakistan, which is anticipated to be commissioned in 2024. However, financial terms of the agreement have been kept under wraps.

In 2019, KBR introduced K-PRO that offers propylene selectivity and conversion. K-PRO is a revolutionary step for the PDH industry that furnishes innovative designs at a very low cost of capital. Also, K-PRO's proprietary catalyst doesn’t require high-cost metals and pollutants, consequently resulting in an ideal environment and lower business overhead.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/kbr-inks-license-deal-js-141402146.html

Comment by Riaz Haq on April 17, 2021 at 8:10am

Engro Polymer & Chemicals Limited (EPCL) is the sole manufacturer of PVC resin in Pakistan. Besides this, the company also produces Chlor Alkali products like Caustic Soda, Sodium Hypochlorite and Hydrochloric Acid.

https://www.globalvillagespace.com/engro-polymer-chemical-continues...


It is a subsidiary of Engro Corporation, involved in the manufacturing, marketing, and distribution of PVC under the brand name ‘SABZ’ and other quality Chlor-Vinyl allied products.

Engro Polymer and Chemicals is Pakistan’s multi-billion-dollar company, which saw the highest every profitability since its establishment in 1997. In its IPO, Rs. 3 billion shares were issued, and the company’s IPO was oversubscribed by 5.4 times.

Its PVC plant has a capacity of 295 Kilo Tons per Annum (KTA) (after expansion) while EDC and VCM have the respective capacities of 127 and 204 KTA.


South Asia has been one of the crucial markets in the vinyl world due to its supply deficits both for PVC and feedstocks. With the high population growth, the market of PVC is expected to grow, especially in the construction sector.

Especially, keeping in mind the government’s focus on affordable housing, expected improvement in economic growth the country’s per capita PVC consumption is expected to increase in the years to come and converge towards international levels.

Keeping the same view in mind, AKD Securities has also predicted an upward trend in the price of EPCL, due to increased PVC Ethylene margins and EPCL’s new expansion of 50 percent of the existing plant’s capacity.

According to the AKD analysis, “the PVC ethylene margins have recently surpassed ~US$1,000/MT in Mar’21 on the back of force majeure declared by PVC capacities in the US and, soft ethylene prices amid a recent wave of global capacity expansion resulting in excess ethylene supply.”

All of this is coming at an optimum time for EPCL as its new expansion of PVC capacity by 100K tons that went online on 1st Match and debottlenecking exercise for VCM (Vinyl Chloride Monomer), a gas used in the production of PVC will enable the company to meet the demand in the market.

EPCL being the sole supplier in Pakistan caters to 70 percent of local PVC demand. The supply sector has been hugely hurt due to lockdown around the world driving the prices of PVC up. This has thus led to a bull cycle in PVC prices which are up 100/30% FYTD/CYTD.

Comment by Riaz Haq on April 17, 2021 at 8:16am

Product made from polymers are all around us: clothing made from synthetic fibers, polyethylene cups, fiberglass, nylon bearings, plastic bags, polymer-based paints, epoxy glue, polyurethane foam cushion, silicone heart valves, and Teflon-coated cookware. The list is almost endless.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5524987/#:~:text=Produ....


Polymers are widely used advanced materials, which are found almost in every material used in our daily life. To date, the importance of polymers has been much more highlighted because of their applications in different dominions of sciences, technologies and industry – from basic uses to biopolymers and therapeutic polymers. The main aim of this editorial is to accentuate the pragmatic impacts of polymers in human daily life.

Keywords: Macromolecule, Monomer, Natural polymer, Polymer, Synthetic polymer
The polymers, a word that we hear about it a lot, is very vital and one cannot imagine the life without it. Polymers, a large class of materials, consist of many small molecules named monomers that are linked together to form long chains and are used in a lot of products and goods that we use in daily life.1

Since many years, people used polymers in their life but they did not know it well almost until World War II. There were relatively few materials available for the manufacture of the article needed for a civilized life. Steel, glass, wood, stone, brick, and concrete for most of the construction and cotton, wood, jute, and a few other agricultural products for clothing or fabric manufacture were used.

The rapid increase in demand for the manufactured products introduce the new materials. These new materials are polymers, and their impact on the present way of life is almost incalculable. Product made from polymers are all around us: clothing made from synthetic fibers, polyethylene cups, fiberglass, nylon bearings, plastic bags, polymer-based paints, epoxy glue, polyurethane foam cushion, silicone heart valves, and Teflon-coated cookware. The list is almost endless.2

The word “polymer”, or sometimes "macromolecule", is derived from classical Greek poly meaning "many" and meres meaning "parts". The polymer molecule has very high molecular weight (between 10 000-1000 000 g/mol) and consists of several structural units usually bound together by covalent bonds.1,3

Polymers are obtained through chemical reaction of monomers. Monomers have the ability to react with another molecule from the same type or another type in the suitable condition to form the polymer chain. This process in nature has resulted to the formation of natural polymers, while the synthetic polymers are man-made.

Polymers have been around us in the natural world since the very beginning (e.g., cellulose, starch, and natural rubber). Man-made polymeric materials have been studied since the middle of the nineteenth century. Today, the polymer industry has rapidly developed and is larger than the copper, steel, aluminum and some other industries combined.4

Both natural and synthetic polymers are remarkably involved in comfort and facilitation of human life and are responsible for life itself, for medication, nutrition, communication, transportation, irrigation, container, clothing, recording history, buildings, highways, etc. In fact, it is difficult to imagine human society without synthetic and natural polymers. In our ever-increasing technological world, science plays a crucial role in providing solutions to critical problems of food, clean and abundant water, air, energy, and health. The knowledge of polymers and related texts provide both the information and insights of their better understanding in our life. The information collected from the basic science courses lead to understanding the polymers.

Comment by Riaz Haq on February 15, 2022 at 5:47pm

Dastaangoi
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Pakistani Beverages (1/3)
Pakola was the creation of seven brothers from the Teli family of Dhoraji in India who migrated to Pakistan in 1947. The idea of Pakola came from its founder Haji Ali Mohammad, who dreamed of developing a drink that portrayed the true reflection and taste of Pakistan. In order to pursue his dream, Haji Ali Mohammad opened a small factory with only two machines at Lawrence Road in Karachi, Pakistan with Pakola Ice-cream Soda being the initial product.
The drink was launched at Pakistan Air Force base on the anniversary of Pakistan’s Independence, 14 August 1950, in the presence of the first Prime Minister, Liaquat Ali Khan.
Later when Pakistan Beverages (PB) came into existence at SITE (Karachi), the brand Pakola was produced there. In 1979, when Pakistan Beverages location was announced as a production facility for Pepsi, Mehran Bottlers came into existence and continued to produce the drink along with other products such as Apple Sidra and Bubble Up.
Pakola is now available in America, Africa, Australia, Canada, Middle East, New Zealand and the United Kingdom. It is the only carbonated beverage manufactured in Pakistan that is exported globally.

Comment by Riaz Haq on February 15, 2022 at 6:00pm

PABC raises Rs4.6b through IPO
Can maker secures maximum allowed price of Rs49 per share

https://tribune.com.pk/story/2306898/pabc-raises-rs46b-through-ipo

Pakistan Aluminium Beverage Cans (PABC) raised Rs4.6 billion by selling one-fourth of the stake in the company to institutional, individual and retail investors at the Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX) on Wednesday.

The company secured the maximum allowed price of Rs49 per share, which it determined by holding the Dutch auction (book building process) on Tuesday and Wednesday. It kick-started the auction at the minimum (floor) price of Rs35 per share.

Rules in place allowed the company to sell shares at 40% higher price against its floor price of Rs35 per share. The company sold a total of 93.88 million (26%) shares in the auction at the PSX.

The IPO was oversubscribed by 2.5 times at 233.23 million shares against the offer to sell 93.88 million shares.

It was the second largest initial public offering (IPO) in the private sector in terms of size of raised funds at Rs4.6 billion.

Funds gathered through the listing would go to UK-based asset management firm Ashmore that plans to break away from the company. It held a total of 51% stake in the company, out of which it sold almost half (26%) through the auction at the PSX.

Ashmore has also entered into agreements to sell rest of its holding in the company at a price of Rs30.80-31.85 to two major investors including Hamida Salim Mukaty (part of Liberty Group) and Soorty Enterprises (Private) Limited in private deals. PABC has shared plans to enhance its annual capacity from 700 million cans to 950 million cans. It aims to complete the expansion by July 2022.

The expansion is being financed through the State Bank of Pakistan’s (SBP) Long Term Financing Facility (LTFF) at an attractive rate of 3% (inclusive of bank margin of 1%). The company has established relationship with key beverage bottlers in Pakistan and Afghanistan such as PepsiCo, Coca Cola, Mehran Bottlers (Pakola) and Zalal Mowafaq, Afghanistan.

In addition to this, the company also supplies aluminium beverage cans to Nestle Pakistan, Murree Brewery, King Beverages, Super Cola Beverages, Sufi Group of Companies, Six B, Daani International, Master Beverages and Foods and Afghan Red Pomegranate.

As per company estimates, the can penetration in the beverage packaging market is roughly 3-4%.

The off-trade consumption in soft drinks market of Pakistan stood at 3.13 billion litres in 2020 and it is expected to hit 4.34 billion litres by 2025, registering a five-year CAGR of 6.7% on volume basis, as per Euromonitor International.

Comment by Riaz Haq on March 8, 2022 at 12:56pm

Pakistan’s Fatima Group inks $1 billion deals with global agriculture giants at Expo 2020 Dubai


https://www.techjuice.pk/pakistans-fatima-group-inks-1-billion-deal...

CMEC as a technology partner, will help with the adaption of climate-smart precision agriculture farm machinery, improved high-yielding seeds, and other crop inputs in Pakistan. In addition, Sarh Attaqnia Company is a key partner that will invest in developing a state-of-the-art agriculture value chain encompassing sustainable production, processing, warehousing, and export marketing of grain crops to help ensure regional food security.

Pakistan has over 20% of its GDP linked with agriculture and about 64% of the human resource associated with it. This collaboration will potentially unlock a tremendous amount of untapped land resources of Pakistan by bringing fallow lands under cultivation for sustainable production of crops like rice, barley, oats, silage bales for livestock, and dairy industry under the Corporate Agriculture Farming initiative. Fatima Group, along with the Trade Development Authority of Pakistan, is at the Pakistan Pavilion in Expo 2020 Dubai over the next four days, holding a range of events showcasing its commitment to help ensure regional food security, agricultural innovation, and women empowerment in the agriculture sector of Pakistan.

Fatima Group contributes significantly to the economic development of Pakistan. It was established in 1936 to ensure the trading of commodities and which gradually entered into the manufacturing of various products. The Group has ensured a success story that has spread over seven decades, expanding its horizon from trading to manufacturing. As of now, the Group is engaged in trading of commodities, manufacturing of fertilizers, textiles, sugar, mining and energy.

Comment by Riaz Haq on December 19, 2022 at 7:33am

Cotton From Prehistoric Pakistan Found in 7,200-year-old Village in Israel

https://www.haaretz.com/archaeology/2022-12-19/ty-article/cotton-fr...

The cotton found in Neolithic Israel, dyed in blue and other colors, couldn’t have been local because it isn’t indigenous – but it was in the Indus Valley, archaeologists say

Around 7,000 years ago, somebody arrived in a prehistoric village in today’s northern Israel with a luxurious novelty: cotton.

Cotton was not known to the earliest civilizations rising in the Near East because it isn’t indigenous to the region, and where and when it was first domesticated remains a mystery. But now traces of this alien plant with its exquisitely soft bolls have been detected in Tel Tsaf.

This is the earliest trace of cotton found in the Near East to date by centuries, the researchers say. They believe it originated in the Indus Valley, though do not rule out an African origin.

How did cotton get to Tel Tsaf 7,000 years ago from the Indus Valley (or North Africa)? By trading, suggest Li Liu of Stanford University, Maureece Levin of the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, Florian Klimscha of the Lower Saxony State Museum (Hannover, Germany) and Danny Rosenberg of the University of Haifa, writing in Frontiers in Plant Science.

Tel Tsaf contains the ruins of a village that arose about 7,300 to 7,200 years ago and would thrive for about 500 years, after which it was deserted for reasons that remain unknown. That in itself is quite the mystery given the abundance of its environs in the central Jordan Valley, south of the Sea of Galilee, Rosenberg notes. But for its time, this had been some settlement.

The wonders found during half a century of excavation there include the most ancient copper object in this part of the Middle East (there’s somewhat older in Iraq), a clay model of a grain silo – possibly indicating ritual involving food cultivation and storage – and a stamped sealing from around 7,000 years ago. This all suggests, the archaeologists surmise, that Tel Tsaf was an extraordinarily wealthy place as Late Neolithic settlements went.

Now Liu, Rosenberg and colleagues have detected cotton microfibers, at least some of which were dyed, from 7,000 years ago. This may provide further indication of trading relationships at the cusp of the transition from the Late Neolithic to the Early Chalcolithic in the valley.

It bears adding that the earliest cotton reported previously was in Dhuweila, eastern Jordan, and dates to centuries later – some time between 6,450 years ago to around 5,000 years ago.

To be clear, it isn’t that humans strolled around in the altogether with their bits flapping in the breeze until discovering the delights of cotton. The thinking, says Rosenberg, is that the earliest garb was animal skins, whether worn to preserve modesty, for reasons of status, for warmth or for some other reason.

Comment by Riaz Haq on December 19, 2022 at 7:34am

Cotton From Prehistoric Pakistan Found in 7,200-year-old Village in Israel

https://www.haaretz.com/archaeology/2022-12-19/ty-article/cotton-fr...


But hmo-kind discovered plant fibers at least tens of thousands of years ago. In 2020, archaeologists found no less than three-ply cord in a Neanderthal context in France, taking the crown from 23,000-year-old string found in Ohalo, Israel. What the Neanderthals or humans from Ohalo were doing with string, we do not know. However, the archaeologists note that the ability to create cord is the prerequisite for a host of potential developments, including textile weaving.


Textiles do not preserve well in the archaeological record, to put it mildly. Yet moving on from the Ohalo cord, evidence of early weaving pops up here and there – including an extremely complex woven basket found in a cave in the Judean Desert from 10,500 years ago. Material made of oak bast (the innards of bark), meanwhile, was found in Çatalhöyük, Turkey, from 8,500 years ago.


In short, before cotton, people in the region were using bast and flax fibers. And now Liu, Rosenberg and the team report on cotton in Tel Tsaf – definitely from afar, and seemingly before the plant had even been domesticated. And it was dyed, to boot.

What colors were the fibers tinted, and can they speak to Neolithic tastes? They cannot. Rosenberg stresses that the sample of fibers from Tel Tsaf is small (123 microfibers in total), and 16 being observed to be cotton in shades of blue, three pink, one purple, one green and three brown/black means precisely nothing about their preferences. What it does mean, the professor qualifies, is that these late prehistoric peoples were not just making textiles and fibers – they were doing further manipulation and coloring their cloths.

By the way, the most frequently used fiber in ancient Tel Tsaf was bast, and they also used flax and jute, the archaeologists report.

A story from Pakistan

Let us move onto the cotton's origin. Why couldn’t the cotton fibers of Tel Tsaf be local? And why do they think it’s Pakistan, not North Africa?

It isn’t likely to have been grown locally because cotton is happiest in tropical and subtropical regions with ample water. It apparently didn’t grow in prehistoric Israel, and the thinking is that like the “invention” of agriculture itself – the cultivation of cotton arose independently around the world, including in the Indus Valley and North Africa. “But cultivation in North Africa was later,” Rosenberg explains.

The earliest archaeological evidence of cotton’s use is in the Pre-Pottery Neolithic period at the Mehrgarh burial site in central Balochistan, Pakistan. Cotton threads were used to string copper beads about 8,500 to 7,500 years ago.

It bears clarifying that the earliest known cotton fabric is a tiny fragment of actual cloth (albeit stuck to the lid of a silver vase), which was discovered at Mohenjo-daro, also Pakistan, from 5,000 to 4,750 years ago.

So, cotton was known in some context in prehistoric Pakistan at the time of its appearance in Tel Tsaf, Rosenberg says.

What cotton? Wild cotton. The plant apparently wouldn’t be domesticated for at least 2,000 years more, he explains. “Based primarily on evidence from seeds, domestication is thought to have occurred during the time of the Harappan civilization (2600-1900 B.C.E.),” the authors write.

And how might the wild cotton have been used, aside from making threads to string crude copper beads? Weaving textiles is a reasonable assumption, because cotton isn’t the stuff for baskets.

Comment by Riaz Haq on March 5, 2023 at 8:30am

Hanging out with Pakistan’s 1%

https://tribune.com.pk/story/2404547/hanging-out-with-pakistans-1

Australian anthropologist rubbed shoulders with Pakistan's wealthiest people for 14 months to understand how they live


Choosing Pakistan for her PhD research project, she set out to investigate Pakistan’s elite. Her research based on interviews of many people from elite families revealed that beneath the formal structure lie networks of power and influence linked by family, social connections and marriages through which economic and political competition, deals and alliances are made.

Initially, her focus was going to be about the aspirations of the middle class, but a car ride to Lahore, changed the course of her research. “I wanted to learn more about middle-class Pakistanis as I spent a lot of time with my colleagues and my friends,” she says. “But one day, I had to go to Lahore to meet some academics at LUMS and was all set for a Daewoo trip, but my friend who I was staying with suggested that I go with a friend of hers who was driving to Lahore. Over the three and a half hours of this car ride to Lahore, I started asking questions and this amazing story came out about this person’s family business as a cigarette manufacturer, his family, networks of uncles and cousins and family members involved in trade with China, and of the bribes they’d recently been asked to pay.”

By the time they arrived in Lahore, Armytage had made up her mind to write a book about big business families. “A few days later, I sat with an industrialist, his brother and his cousin and one of their family friends, the son of a prominent Lahore politician and they drew this three-page long list of the wealthiest and most powerful business people in Pakistan to be interviewed,” she recalls. “They marked at least 20 people off that list that they could access either through work or friends.”

Eventually, Armytage had several interviews lined up with some of the biggest business families in Lahore.

“Every person that I interviewed introduced me to more,” says Armytage. “Some I met multiple times for second interviews or to meet more people and it just spiralled. There were challenges, but it opened up in a way that I hadn’t expected. A lot of these families had gone through turbulence because of the instability in Pakistan so was plenty to tell. Sometimes they would speak for hours and I would be exhausted.”

Did they enjoy talking to her or thought she was being nosy? “People were clear about what I was doing,” says Armytage. “I had to form relationships of trust with people who I would be introduced to and I told them that I am writing a book. People enjoy talking about what they do and it’s surprising how much they tell you if you’re genuinely interested in their lives,” she says. “Pakistanis are so used to being asked about terrorism and political instability that I think they were delighted to be asked about their success. Mostly, it would be about their work, families and friendships. Also I could gauge how much freedom I had to ask. There were some areas, however, where I was advised to not go too far.”

Comment by Riaz Haq on March 5, 2023 at 8:31am

Hanging out with Pakistan’s 1%

https://tribune.com.pk/story/2404547/hanging-out-with-pakistans-1

Did being a foreigner and a woman help in these influential people loosening up?

“I have an entire chapter in the book about my position as a middle-class foreign woman enabling me to access often older, Pakistani, wealthy men who were far above me in social class and from a different culture,” she responds. “Being a woman changes the dynamic significantly. That type of access is difficult for Pakistani journalists.”

Armytage claims to be well-accustomed to the Pakistani society, since she has been exposed to it for 22 years in different capacities.

Her research points out that the wealthy in Pakistan are not a homogenous group, but divided along various lines such as region, ethnicity, religion, and business sector. Armytage argues that these divisions are important for understanding the micro politics of wealth in Pakistan, as they shape the ways in which the wealthy interact with each other and the society.

Hence, the central message of her book is that Pakistan is run by a small group of elite families who comprise different power blocks in business, politics, bureaucracy and military. “They determine the direction of the country, make laws and benefit from that,” she says. “The book looks at how they have power that they have maintained since Partition and in times of major upheavals such as the 1965 and 1971 wars. Basically, the elite creates regulation, but does not have to follow it. They get wealthier and more powerful as they shape up for a better control on things. The book also looks at strategic socialising and marriages and the ‘culture of exemptions.’”

Armytage explains that this culture enables the elite to maintain and buttress their positions and thwart competition. The use of law as a mechanism, plus extralegal and sometimes illegal activities constitute the means of wealth accumulation and preservation as well as tax avoidance.

“Much like the global elite of which they are a part, the Pakistani elite direct the legal and regulatory structures that determine wealth flow and opportunity within the country, while simultaneously operating outside of, and above these structures,” she explains. “There are two groups of established elite. Firstly, those who acquired their wealth pre-partition through land grants and other perks from the Mughal empire all from association with the British and through benefitting from that particular regime, and also in the first couple of decades after Pakistan. Then there are those who acquired their wealth mostly post-1977 in relation to the military regime of the time and other regimes that followed. Within the established elite group, there are a couple of different groups. There is the group of mainly middle-class Gujrati traders who Muhammad Ali Jinnah relied on to establish the new Pakistani nation and that becomes really important when we look at Pakistani elite today. They were called upon to help establish the industry that Pakistan needed. At the time of Partition, all the industrial infrastructure of united India remained in India and an enormous vacuum needed to be filled to justify the needs of the new Pakistan. So these middle-class groups were lured over to Pakistan by Jinnah and his government and given tax concessions and other perks to make business lucrative for them. As a result they really thrived within that community. Most of those traders moved to Karachi while the established elite settled in Lahore, which is closer to the Indo-Pak border that they crossed over.”

Armytage observes that marriages among the elite create bonds between families and promote ‘political dynasties’ which helps protect their power and influence.

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