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Stamicarbon, the DSM Licensing Center celebrated its 60th anniversary in May. Today Stamicarbon is the world market leader in licensing urea technology with some 225 licensed urea plants and a market share on new capacity of about 66%.
Although the history of licensing goes back as far as the 1770s, the licensing business only started making its mark in the 1930s. Being one of the first companies established for the sole purpose of licensing, makes it interesting to take a deeper look to the evolution Stamicarbon has gone through.
Establishment
Stamicarbon was born in 1947 in the south of the Netherlands as a subsidiary of
the “Dutch State Mines”, today known as DSM. The parent company DSM was established in 1902 by the Dutch government, with the objective to making the Netherlands less dependent on foreign coal imports. DSM initiated the operation of several coal mines. DSM had a specialist research organization, providing service work for the coal mines. From 1937 on they did also research on coal washing, using certain machines to wash and separate coal from rocks.
That research quickly generated much experience and knowledge, and numerous patents. DSM operated an active policy aimed at exploiting its patent ownership. And after World War Two, DSM decided that these activities should be placed in the hands of a separate organization that could act as a contract party: Stamicarbon was founded. The name Stamicarbon is a contraction of the words State Mines Carbon. The initial objective was: ‘obtaining and exploiting inventions, patents and working methods in general and in particular in the field of the purification of pit coal’.
Coal mines
From 1947 till 1989 Stamicarbon developed and sold licenses for coal washing plants according to the Float and Sink Process, the Cyclone Process and the Sieve Bend Process.
At establishment Stamicarbon started with licensing of coal washing plants, based on the Float and Sink Process |
In the early nineteen sixties, sales of coal washers started to shrink because the coal mines started to become less and less economic to run.Stamicarbon shifted its sales markets to Eastern Europe, America and India and searched for new opportunities for the cyclone process in the ore washing plants and the separation of scrap metal from cars.
Total sales during this coal era comprised 185 float and sink coals washers, 685 cyclone washers and more then 5000 sieve bends. |
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Fertilizer goldmines
Beside pit coal, the coal mines produced coke oven gas. Direct from the start DSM saw the opportunity to use the by-products higher added value. The gas was used to produce ammonia, which served as a raw material for fertilizers like Ammonium Sulphate, Ammonium Phosphate and Ammonium Nitrate. This turned out to be a masterly move. Many mining companies failed to make this switch, and in the end this led to their downfall. DSM however developed from a national mining company to a leading-edge, stock exchange-quoted, globally-operating chemical and Life Sciences Company and Stamicarbon to a well-known licensor of state-of-the art technologies.
After World War Two, fertilizers became extremely important for food production. Research activities were increased and led to the breakthrough with the production and licensing of the mixed fertilizers Nitrogen-Phosphate, Nitrogen-Phosphate-Potassium, Calcium Nitrate and later urea. In total Stamicarbon sold 158 licenses in this area excluding urea.
The golden urea era
Urea is produced from ammonia and carbon dioxide. However a significant problem in the synthesis process was the corrosion of equipment. This came to an end by the discovery that by adding small amounts of oxygen to the ammonia-carbon dioxide mixture, the problem of corrosion was almost entirely suppressed. This led to the “oxygen patent” in 1954. In a single stroke, the name Stamicarbon was established in the urea industry.
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In 1946, DSM had decided to build a small urea plant
(15 mtpd), which was commissioned in 1952. In the nineteen fifties, the use of urea as a fertilizer increased rapidly. Many manufacturers expanded their production capacities. DSM and Stamicarbon realized they would have to increase their minimal capacity, in order to compete.
In December 1953, DSM took the strategic decision to develop an own urea technology in stead of taking a license from the market leader Montecatini. The ‘oxygen patent’ played an important role in this decision. It turned out to be the most important decision in the entire history of Stamicarbon.
The first DSM urea plant based on its own technology was commissioned in 1956. One year later Stamicarbon sold its first urea license to the Société Carbochimique in Tertre, Belgium, a plant with a capacity of 70 mtpd. Urea activities were becoming ever more important.
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The Societé Carbochimique plant in Belgium,
the
first
urea licensee in 1957. |
Expansions into chemicals
At the start of the nineteen sixties, the coal washing business started to suffer from the coal crisis in Europe, the urea activities were flourishing, but competition became fiercer. DSM started to focus increasingly on high-end chemical processes, with higher added value and Stamicarbon followed by licensing:
- Caprolactam , the raw material for nylon-6 and widely used in clothing, ropes, tires and carpeting. Today some 19 plants are equipped with Stamicarbon technology, being almost half of all plants worldwide.
- Phenol , mainly used as feedstock for the production of caprolactam. In 2004 DSM halted production of phenol in the Netherlands.
- Melamine , based on urea as its raw material, is used as the coating layer on tabletops, work surfaces and on laminate floors. In the period 1967 to 1994, 11 melamine plants were licensed.
- Ethylene Propylene Diene Monomer (EPDM) rubber is a synthetic form of rubber with a very long lifetime, in excess of 50 years. This high quality material is widely used, for example in car rubbers and roof coverings.
Services, Training centers and software developments
The chemical industry is extremely cyclical. In the nineteen seventies and eighties, licensing sales fell as a result of recession and saturated markets. In order to compensate this and to become less dependent on this ‘cyclicity’, Stamicarbon launched additional services. Examples were Plant Management Consultancy, Training Programs, Training Centers, Plant Inspections, Replacement of Equipment, Troubleshooting and Stamisoft, software products for process simulators. In 1992, Stamicarbon decided to sell its software activities and only continued the Urea Services activities, which play an equally important role as the licensing of grass root plants.
Petrochemical activities
Stamicarbon launched licensing of Low Density Polyethylene (LDPE) technology in 1973. It is mainly used as packaging film, bags and shrink film. Followed in 1994 by the introduction of the newly developed Clean Tubular Reactor (CTR) technology. Since 1977, Stamicarbon added the High Density Polyethylene (HDPE) technology to its licensing contracts. This polyethylene is mainly used in bottles, containers, crates and in very thin films.
Following the takeover of DSM’s petrochemical activities in 2002 by the Saudi Arabian company SABIC, licensing activities were also transferred. The only polyethylene licensing business still held by Stamicarbon is therefore the licensing of LLDPE with the COMPACT Solution Technology.
Innovations
| Since the company’s foundation, innovation has been a priority at Stamicarbon. New technologies are crucial for maintaining and strengthening market positions. In order to keep a leading position, innovation is vital. |
A Stamicarbon Pool condenser made of
innovative Safurex® material. |
Therefore Stamicarbon spends some 10% of its turnover on research, developments and patents.Stamicarbon endorses the principle of Open Innovation: developments take place in partnerships, meaning in close collaboration with parent company DSM, research institutions as well as other third parties.
In particular in the field of urea, Stamicarbon is a constant frontrunner with a series of developments which would not have been so successful without the good relations and cooperation with our customers, licensed contractors and preferred suppliers.
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Examples are the development of the CO2 Stripping process, the Urea 2000plus™ technology, the Mega plant Technology, the Safurex® material, the Integrally geared CO2 compressors, the Urea pelletizers and recently the Stamicarbon Granulation technology. Future urea developments relate to significant reduction in the total cost of ownership of urea plants. This concerns e.g. our low oxygen plant concept based on our revolutionary Safurex® material that reduces the investment costs of the plant significantly. |
Current product portfolio
Stamicarbon develops its license portfolio continuously, supported by own development and the technology provided by DSM businesses. Currently, Stamicarbon provides licenses in the field of Industrial Chemicals, Performance Materials, Nutrition and Pharma:
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Industrial chemicals:
- Urea Technology, a continuously innovated technology in which Stamicarbon is the world market leader.
- LLDPE/HDPE Technology, the Linear Low Density Polyethylene and High Density Polyethylene using the in-house developed COMPACT Solution Technology in combination with a Ziegler type proprietary catalyst system to produce polymers of high competitive quality.
- Secondary Fuel Pellets (Subcoal) Technology, delivers hard and easily-transportable pellets, made from plastic and paper waste from separated household and industry waste with a high caloric value equivalent to coal.
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Performance Materials:
- ALLINCO™ Technology, a proprietary performance additive to be used as chain extender and/or coupling agent for Polyesters and polyamides.
- Unsaturated Polyesters Resins, resins that are used in composites, often strengthened with glass fibers for various applications and end-markets (e.g. building & construction, automotive and marine industry).
- Symphase® Technology – Revolutionary oxygen barrier technology based on vapor deposition of melamine for the (food) packaging industry.
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Application of Symphase® in food packaging. |
Nutrition and Pharma
- Palladium Catalyst Recycling Technology , the technology provides a simple method for regenerating (homogeneous) palladium catalyst that is precipitated as palladium black at the end of a C-C bond forming reaction.
- Multi Site-Directed Mutagenesis technology a technique to study gene and protein structure related function and improve functionalities of a protein and/or a production organism.
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About Stamicarbon
