Thank you, operator, and good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for joining us for our conference call and webcast today.

As usual, joining me today is Rohit Bhardwaj, our Chief Financial Officer. Before I commence the review, I'd like to remind you that our presentation contains certain forward-looking statements that are based on current expectations and are subject to a number of uncertainties and risks and actual results may differ materially.

Further information identifying risks, uncertainties and assumptions and additional information on certain non-IFRS measures referred to in this call can be found in the disclosure documents filed by Chemtrade with the securities regulatory authorities available at sedar.com. One of the non-IFRS measures we will refer to in this call is adjusted EBITDA, which is EBITDA modified to exclude only non-cash items, such as unrealized foreign exchange gains and losses.

For simplicity, we will just refer to this as EBITDA as opposed to adjusted EBITDA. Both of these terms are fully defined in our MD&A.

I want to start today by making a few contextual comments, which will be detailed more fully during the rest of our call. First, generally all of our businesses performed well during the quarter, with our Vancouver chlor-alkali operation performing extremely well.

Secondly, there are a lot of unique financial positives and negatives reflected in the results for the quarter, but these items essentially net off financially. Accordingly, the aggregate reported EBITDA numbers are a pretty fair representation of our operating performance despite the moving parts that we will highlight below.

Third, the integration of our new assets and personnel is well advanced and unfolding as we have planned. Fourth, we took some steps and continue taking steps to simplify and optimize our balance sheet.

And the final opening comment is there's two items mentioned above, which involve the continued optimization of our asset portfolio. We closed the transaction selling our international segment, the results of which are treated as discontinued operations and incurred costs in the quarter to cease production this fall at our small sodium chlorate plant in Nanaimo, British Columbia, which is an immaterial contributor to our financial results.

Turning now to our actual results. The second quarter shows the early benefits of the Canexus acquisition that we completed in early March.

As you know, the Canexus businesses together with our legacy sodium chlorate facility in Prince George, now comprise our Electrochemicals or EC segment. It was another very busy quarter for Chemtrade.

We made significant progress integrating the acquired businesses, completed several initiatives, simplifying our balance sheet from its composition immediately following the closing of the Canexus acquisition and closed the sale of our international business. Rohit will have more details on all of that later.

Our strategy of enhancing size, scale and diversity of earnings took a large step forward with the acquisition of Canexus. The new businesses significantly increased our EBITDA and distributable cash.

EBITDA from continuing operations in the second quarter was $95 million compared to $56.8 million last year, an increase of 67%. Distributable cash after maintenance capital expenditures from continuing operations for the quarter was $58.7 million, an increase of 56% or $0.09 per unit from the same period last year.

We're very pleased with the performance of our new segment, EC. The integration of the Canexus businesses into Chemtrade has been smooth and their contribution to Chemtrade is quite evident as they represent the majority of the EC segment results.

The chlor-alkali business, which was an entirely new product group for Chemtrade, is performing very strongly. As noted on our last call, caustic prices are significantly higher than they were when we did our run rate calculations for the acquisition, and our hydrochloric acid volume is also stronger.

As mentioned above, we are making one change to the asset portfolio we acquired on the Canexus acquisition. We acquired three sodium chlorate plants in North America.

Brandon, Manitoba, Beauharnois, Quebec, and Nanaimo, British Columbia. The Nanaimo plant was small, high cost and had only one customer.

Since we can supply that customer from our other sodium chlorate facilities, we made the decision to close Nanaimo effective September 1 this year. There will be some closure costs, but the closure will not have a material impact on EBITDA.

We want to thank the Nanaimo employees for their contributions. It's an unfortunate fact that this plant was not economically viable, which has led to this action in spite of the excellent efforts of our Nanaimo employees.

Results in our sulphur products and specialty chemical -- sulphur products or SPPC segment were lower than last year but higher than our Q1 results as our plant operations improved. Recall that last year's results included our Augusta plant's normal sales to the across the fence customer Fibrant, who ceased operations later in 2016.

As noted on our last call, we have restarted the Augusta plant, selling to a new across the fence operation, but that plant is unlikely to generate the same level of EBITDA as before the Fibrant shutdown. Our water solutions and specialty chemicals, or WSSC, segment is doing well.

We continue to see stability in the water business and the first phase of our potassium chloride expansion at our Midlothian, Texas, plant is already delivering positive results. Rohit will now provide you with some more details on second quarter results.

Thanks, Mark. Good morning.

As Mark indicated, it was a very strong quarter for Chemtrade, with solid contributions from the new businesses. Also as noted, Aglobis, our former international business, has been treated as a discontinued operation since entering into an agreement on February 24 to sell the business to Mitsui.

That sales for €36.8 million, subject to a working capital adjustment, was completed on May 31. We realized an after-tax gain of $15.3 million on that sale.

Revenue from continuing operations for the second quarter of 2017 was $407.4 million, an increase of $145.3 million from 2016. This increase was primarily due to revenues generated by the newly acquired business, partially offset by lower revenues in the SPPC segment due to lower sales volumes and selling prices for sulfuric acid.

Aggregate EBITDA from continuing operations for the second quarter 2017 was $95 million compared with $56.8 million in the second quarter of 2016. The increase is mainly attributable to the contribution of approximately $39.3 million from the new business in our EC segment.

As Mark mentioned, there were a few large atypical items in the quarter that essentially offset each other. On the positive side, we settled an insurance claim relating to a pre-acquisition incident at the North Vancouver chlor-alkali facility, resulting in a gain of $8.2 million.

On the other side, more than offsetting the insurance recovery were $8.7 million of atypical expenses related to the Electrochem business. These were a $5.4 million charge for severances and a realized foreign exchange loss of $3.3 million.

This related to the unwinding of a cross-currency interest rate swap. Accordingly, as Mark mentioned, EBITDA of $95 million is reflective of this quarter’s performance.

There was one additional item in the quarter which did not affect EBITDA but reduced distributable cash. We paid a premium of approximately $3 million to redeem 35% of Electrochem’s high yield notes.

For the three months ended June 30, 2017, distributable cash after maintenance CapEx from continuing operations was $58.7 million, or $0.63 per unit, compared with $37.6 million or $0.54 per unit in 2016. The per unit amounts are based on a weighted average number of units outstanding of 92.6 million units in the second quarter this year, versus 69.1 million units outstanding last year.

Turning to segmented results for the quarter. SPPC generated revenue of $127 million compared with $144.6 million in 2016.

EBITDA for the quarter was $32.8 million, which was $6.1 million lower than 2016. From a revenue perspective, the main reason for the year-over-year decrease was $10 million of lower revenues for sulphuric acid including the effect of the Fibrant shut down and due to lower selling prices.

We also had $8 million of lower revenues due to reduced volumes of liquid sulphur dioxide or SO2 as a result of exiting manufacturing and selling SO2 in eastern Canada towards the end of 2016. EBITDA was lower due to the impact of the Fibrant closure and its effect on our Augusta plant, as the plant was running at full rates during the second quarter of 2016.

We also had lower volumes of sulphuric acid and some additional costs due to unfavorable sourcing mix for sulphuric acid. Our WSSC segment reported second quarter revenue of $115.7 million compared with $107.3 million in 2016.

As noted earlier, the sodium chlorate business in Prince George, which was formerly part of the WSSC segment, is now part of EC, and all amounts for this year and prior periods have been adjusted to reflect that change. EBITDA was $32.4 million compared with $29.5 million generated in 2016.

This increase is due to higher volumes and prices of water products and of potassium chloride or KCl following the first stage of our expansion at that site Our EC segment reported revenue of $164.7 million, $153.8 million of which is attributable to the newly acquired business. EBITDA was $41.7 million, with $39.3 million contributed by the new business.

It should be noted that results include severance costs of roughly $4 million incurred during the quarter. Excluding unrealized foreign exchange gains, corporate costs during the second quarter of 2017 were $11.8 million, compared with $13.7 million in the second quarter of 2016.

Corporate costs for the second quarter of 2017 include the $8.2 million insurance recovery discussed previously. It also includes the realized foreign exchange loss of $3.3 million I had mentioned and corporate costs for the acquired business of $2.5 million, including $1.4 million of severance costs.

Maintenance CapEx in the second quarter were $12.9 million. We expect maintenance CapEx in 2017 to be approximately $80 million, which includes the newly acquired business at an annual run rate of about $30 million.

Non-maintenance or growth CapEx in the second quarter was $2.8 million. As we have noted in the recent past, we are spending some small amounts of growth CapEx on the new PAC and ACH plants, and our adjuvants facility in New Jersey.

In addition to the $30 million sustenance run rate for our new assets, as we announced last year, we intend to spend about $50 million over the next five years to restore Brandon to the state required to ensure it remains a long-term, reliable, low cost supplier of sodium chlorate. There was no significant spending on these items in Q2.

Finally, some comments on our balance sheet. Following the Canexus acquisition, we initiated a number of actions to simplify our balance sheet.

First, we made mandatory change of control offers for all outstanding unsecured Chemtrade Electrochem debentures and high yield notes. We also announced that we would redeem any of the Electrochem 5.75% debentures that didn’t accept the offer to purchase and Chemtrade’s 5.75% legacy convertible debentures that were maturing at the end of 2018.

In May, we issued $201.3 million 4.75% unsecured debentures, and used part of the net proceeds to fund the change of control offers for the Electrochem debentures, the redemption of our legacy debentures, and the remaining 5.75% Electrochem debentures which didn’t tender to our offer. As a result, we acquired a total of $80.3 million principal amount of the debentures tendered under the change of control offers, completed the redemption of the remaining Electrochem 5.75% debentures that hadn’t accepted the offer, and redeemed the remaining $79.6 million aggregate principal amount of the Chemtrade 5.75% debentures.

None of the high yield notes were tendered into the change of control offer, and on June 26 we redeemed $38.5 million aggregate principal amount, representing 35% of the $110 million principal amount that was outstanding. Following the completion of the change of control offers and the redemption of the remaining outstanding 5.75% Electrochem debentures, from an Electrochem perspective there were approximately $84 million of the 6% debentures, $74.6 million of the 6.5% debentures and $71.5 million of the Electrochem high yield debt outstanding.

Earlier this quarter we announced an offer to exchange the outstanding Electrochem 6% and 6.5% debentures for Chemtrade new convertible debentures with coupon rates of 5.5% and 5.75% respectively. This morning we extended the offer period from August 10 to August 23 in order to allow additional debenture holders to respond.

I’ll now hand the call back to Mark. Mark?

Thank you, Rohit. The primary focus of our efforts in the second quarter was the integration of the Canexus businesses while also moving our legacy businesses forward.

As I said in my opening remarks, integration is going well and we’re very pleased with the contribution the businesses and our new employees are making to Chemtrade. We are well on track to achieving the synergies we expected.

As we said before, we hope to achieve about $10 million of synergies, and all indications are that we will do that. Most of that should be evident by the end of next quarter.

I would like to make two specific comments that relate to our EC segment. First, briefly wanted to discuss hydro rates in Manitoba.

Our Brandon, Manitoba facility accounts for over 70% of our North American chlorate supply once Nanaimo has ceased production. You may have seen that Manitoba Hydro was seeking to increase hydro rates by almost 8% this year and a similar amount next year.

As power represents about 75% of our cost to produce, an increase of this magnitude would have been detrimental unless it could have been recovered in price. Recently the Public Utility Board rejected Manitoba Hydro’s request for such a large increase and instead ordered an interim increase of 3.6%.

This increase is more in line with our expectation of power increases in Manitoba and more reflective of historical increases. We will continue to work with the PUB to ensure that only price increases that are fact based and not harmful to the Manitoba economy are approved.

Secondly, I mentioned we are benefitting from high caustic prices. Caustic prices continue to run at a rate more than $90 per ton higher than the price we used to calculate the acquisition run rate.

While historically chlor-alkali earnings are cyclical and we expect that at some point in time they will cycle again, we currently see no signs that caustic pricing is going to abate. Although we do not generally forecast price movements, industry publications are indicating that the outlook for continued strength in caustic pricing as global demand stays healthy.

Further, our hydrochloric acid demand has significantly increased as fracking activity has again picked up. We can’t forecast how long these dynamics will persist but don’t see anything in the near term or well into 2018 that should change this.

As noted in our last call, if prices finally retreat and we return to the $6 million run rate at which we bought off of, our thesis for buying the Canexus assets remains intact. You would have also noted that CapEx was lower in the second quarter than our run rate for the year, but it is now ramping up.

Also, the five year $50 million capital spending program at Brandon which we had previously mentioned, is being planned so it can be implemented effectively and efficiently. Just to reiterate some of the comments from our last call, this work will not expand capacity but it will ensure that Brandon remains the long-term, reliable, low cost producer of sodium chlorate in North America.

As we also noted, we do not expect any interruptions to production while this work is underway. So, in summary we are well positioned to continue delivering value to our unit holders.

In the first full quarter following the Electrochem acquisition, we generated EBITDA of $95 million, substantially advanced our integration efforts, and simplified both our business portfolio and balance sheet. Looking forward, demand for most of our products remains strong and we are well positioned to continue taking advantage of opportunities as they arise.

Thank you for your attention. And, operator, Rohit and I will now be pleased to answer any questions.

Had a few questions on the Electrochemical business. So I guess, first off, the chlor-alkali volumes of the 62,000 tons in the quarter, it was a little bit higher run rate than what they have done historically.

And is that kind of a run rate we should be thinking about longer-term?

Yes. Yes, to both questions.

Okay. Why the higher rates?

Look, as you all have followed Canexus previously, what I've noted is they had a number of teething problems for a number of years post their technology conversion at Vancouver and had spent money, time and effort actually trying to rectify the issues as they arose. So the first thing is that the plant is in better, reliable operating shape now than it was a couple of years ago.

Secondly, as we mentioned, is increased demand for hydrochloric and chlorine. Let us take advantage of those, it does enhance reliability and actually operate the plant harder because as you know, we need an outlet for chlorine and hydrochloric as well as the caustic to actually run at full rates.

And you made some comments about, when you were looking at Canexus, you were thinking it was a lower valued, North Vancouver was a lower valued asset. Was that like a $10 million EBITDA business and would be now a $20 million EBITDA business?

Is that how we should think about it?

Yes. I guess we do it this way.

If you want to keep it on an apples-to-apples basis, right, which was their SG&A allocation to the plant, is the last reported number that we would have had to when we did the deal, was reported about a $6 million EBITDA run rate. Now included in that $6 million was a bunch of production interruptions.

So again, on an apples-to-apples basis that $6 million was probably $10 million, even at historical pricing and historical volumes. So you take that $10 million number and then you take extra production and increased pricing, in particular for caustic but also on hydrochloric, and that $10 million number grows substantially.

One of the numbers we have gave in here is if you make 220,000 tons of caustic and pricing is up $100 from what it was off what we bought off of, that's $10 million plus $22 million, right. And we've indicated we think caustic still has room to run and hydrochloric pricing is also increasing.

I think just, well, I just want to clarify one thing, the 62,000 ton volume we talked about, just to remind you that actually includes Brazil. So it's not North America.

And so there may be a bit of confusion if people are just comparing it to what Canexus' report is North American chlor-alkali volume. Having said that, that is higher than in North America as well but just to clarify that.

And what were the volumes out of Brazil, roughly?

So we haven't really broken that out because in our kind of world order, we don't segment it too much. But we've said in the past that our North American chlor-alkali volume should be in the 200,000 ton annual kind of range.

So you can assume that's a good guide for what it would have been in this quarter.

Okay, that's helpful. And then what's the increase of the electricity rates at Brandon?

Are your contracts structured in such a way that any price increase in electricity prices will be automatically reflected?

As a general answer, no. Some are but most of the industry actually does not have power pass-through provisions in their contract.

On the other hand is, I don't want to get my numbers wrong, but 25% or 30% of the industry capacity is located in Manitoba. The industry is running at very high rates.

If there's cost escalation, it will get reflected in price at some point in time.

And how about the Canadian dollar?

I think same response for that, although two-thirds of chlorate production is Canadian based and two-thirds roughly of demand is U.S. based.

So the same dynamics should play out as product does move across the border, but not contractually but through marketing conditions.

And both of those comments is over time.

Yes, yes.

I just had a quick question on Canexus. You mentioned that there were some severance costs and you're looking to kind of simplify the debt structure.

Are there any other -- and then also the Nanaimo facility closures, are you expecting to see any other one-off charges or any other things like for the rest of the year? You mentioned that Nanaimo was not going to be material but should we expect to see any other charges in the second half?

So the severances we incurred were partially, mainly for the head office people, although the $1 million for Nanaimo. So we don't expect any more severances in Nanaimo.

There may be some costs as we wind that down but this should not be material. So there is a little bit of severances later in the year but again, not material.

I think most of it is now behind us. So you shouldn't be expecting anything material for the back half of this year.

Okay, got it. And then just one quick question on Augusta, the facility.

You mentioned that it's selling to another customer. Could you give, I guess, rough indication of what the cash flow reduction is relative to the previous contract?

So what we had said was that in our contract that we had with Fibrant, with the customer there, we had contractual protection for a few years at about 50% of what they were contributing. And then what we had said was as we get into this new relationship, the new contribution from this business should be around the same.

So you can expect that more than, about a 50% reduction in current terms. And so it's roughly $1 million a quarter, $4 million a year.

And that's based on current run rates. The hope is that this is done for longer-term operation that has some legs to it and some potential upside.

But I think for our purposes for now let's just assume that's got a $4 million run rate which is roughly half of what it used to be.

Okay. So just to clarify.

So I guess, near-term because you're getting 50% protection from Fibrant and the new contract is about 50%.

No, no.

No, no. That is you have an obligation to mitigate under the Fibrant contract so the new earnings essentially replace the Fibrant contractual payment.

From our perspective, there's potential upside. It's actually, the new guy actually runs harder and better.

And certainly, it should last for a longer duration because the Fibrant contract ended 2021, I think, right? So we hope there's upside from where we are in both profitability and term.

This year actually is one basically replaces the other.

Could you maybe walk us through, for each segment, SPPC, WSSC, Electrochem, how you see earnings developing in the second half of the year versus the first half of the year? And maybe you could talk about utilization of these plants, pricing, outages, volumes and whatever you can to help us figure how second half earnings are going to develop for the different segments versus first half?

I thought you would just come and actually take our internal budget, Joel. We actually don't give that kind of specificity of our forecast.

I guess what we could say is that, I'll tell you certain things and we'll see where we get to, right. Similar to other years is our second and third quarter should be stronger than our first and fourth.

Our fourth quarter obviously should be stronger than this year than it was last year, with the Canexus addition and actually fewer operating issues...

And I think the SPPC last year Q4 was very weak, so we should be better than that.

That's right. So those few general statements.

A few more specific statements, right, is that we see our Electrochemicals segment continuing to perform well and hopefully continuing to strengthen as we see no signs of those key products I mentioned actually lessening. We see SPPC, again, should continue to be good.

Regen continues to run strong. Our Ultra Pure business is good.

So we continue to see actually now more strength and consistency in that segment than we actually saw, I guess, in the fourth quarter and first quarter last year and this year, respectively. And in our WSSC segment, again, with the exception of that little seasonality in the water business, third quarter versus fourth, is that we think that segment is on track to continue generating relatively consistent earnings going forward.

You had a large drop-off in WSSC in Q4 because there's some issues, expansions and plant issues. You had a much a smaller drop-off in Q4 '15 versus Q3.

So with that, should we expect more...

'17 should look more like '15, is that we had specific plant issues at the end of the year last year.

Okay. And then finally, so in SPPC, we've seen sulfur and sulfuric acid prices in North America tick up a little bit the last sort of while.

It had a lot of different outages at different plants and smelters in North America in the middle of the year. How do you see pricing sort of developing for sulphur, sulphuric acid second half of the year?

What are you seeing in the market? What's the Copper Cliff impact?

And what should we think for all of that?

Yes. So I think it goes like this, is remember in our world actually, in the acid world, our big driver is really the regen markets.

Then we talk about the ultra pure market and last we talk about merchant sulphuric acid. So again, as we see continued strength in actually the regen and ultra pure markets for, I guess, regen's frankly I think you all know, is in the merchant market.

It's our view that supply demand dynamics are, I don't want to say strong, but are definitely firm, right. And we're hopeful that actually pricing starts to follow our belief of dynamics and we'll know for sure whether or not that happens during the year-end contract season.

But for the reasons that you mentioned, a bunch of supply reductions and some ticking up in activity in certain industries is we think that, actually, there's room to move. And we'll see how successful we all are come 2018.

And, I guess, just keep in mind that as usual, we'll spend more CapEx in the back half of the year.

And, sorry, I'll give you one more even though you didn't ask for it. Remember, actually our merchant acid pricing is, even if it moves we give away a bunch of that to actually our byproduct suppliers under our risk shared contracts, right.

A few questions. First, going back to the Nanaimo closure.

Just curious, so the severance costs are pretty much behind you. I was wondering if on one end you would have more site remediation cost?

Or alternatively, would that site have some potential for real estate and ultimately could be a cash benefit?

So I guess, from a remediation perspective, we just will have to evaluate all our options there. But as per accounting rules, we are required to have asset retirement obligations on the book, which we do, as we have asset retirement obligations for all of our sites.

But having said that, we have to evaluate a plan if there's some useful life to that site, whether it's, like we said, we develop for different use or. So those are [things] [ph] we are going to develop, but we don't expect any unfavorability coming out of that.

Okay. And will you be serving customer from Brandon or Prince George?

We'll be serving them in the most expeditious, cost effective way that actually satisfies his requirements.

Okay. Second, on the corporate cost side, there was a few puts and takes.

But what would be, assuming no big change in LTIP, what would be a normal run rate for corporate cost on a quarterly basis?

So I think it would be, with our current structure, probably in the $55 million to $60 million range.

Okay. And is it too early to get a sense of how much CapEx we should expect for 2018, both maintenance and growth?

And how much of the $50 million for Brandon should we expect to be spent in '18?

So I think probably $90 million to $100 million for next year. And we, as Mark said, we're still working on the Brandon plant because it is a longer-term plan to see what's the most efficient way to deploy the capital there.

So we can give more clarity on that as we get into the third quarter when we would have done more of a planning cycle.

And the 90, 100 bps, all maintenance or all-in including growth?

That's all maintenance. And we don't, at this stage, have a lot of additional growth slotted for 2018.

Okay. And lastly for me, Fibria has reported to be taking significant downtime at their plant in Barra do Riacho in Brazil in Q4, making room for their new plant in Três Lagoas.

And there's discussion or speculation how much longer that downtime could be taking. Can you remind us exactly what are the impact of the fixed margin contract you have down there, if it would produce more or less in the future?

So we do have, our contract is a fixed margin contract but it is subject to volume risk. So to the extent they take volume, we get a fixed margin.

So we do have exposure. Now having said that, we're unsure whether, how much downtime they're actually going to take and there is some merchant opportunity there to the extent it take some lower volume of product from us.

So at this stage, we are not expecting it to be material in 2017 and we don't expect that this is going to be a long-term thing. As far as we can see, the pulp market needs supply and this is a large operation that they have.

So we aren't expecting this to be anything permanent or long term and in the short term, we don't expect a material impact out of it.

Just one question for me. Of the $95 million of EBITDA that you guys just reported, on a year-over-year basis, can you quantify what the impact is from just better pricing on hydrochloric and caustic?

So I guess, what's interesting is, clearly our competitive numbers don't have anything for those items in 2016. So really, you're looking at what could have happened in the Electrochem standalone world, right?

Yes.

So I think the best thing for that, I mean, what you can do quite easily is look at what was reported by Canexus in Q2 of last year, because they were a public company and you should be able get those comparative numbers there. And as Mark has mentioned, a lot of that uptick is coming from chlor-alkali because chloride tends to be more stable.

If you want a simple way of doing it, if you assume we make 200,000 tons of caustic in Vancouver, so assuming we make 50,000 a quarter. Price is up $100, right, so there's $5 million of that there and there is more with hydrochloric too.

Yes. So to give you a perspective, last year in Q2 the North American chlor-alkali segment for Electrochem actually lost money or kind of broke even, you can call it, and this year it's obviously a lot higher.

So a lot of that uptick is coming from there.

Just one for me on the Midlothian expansion. It sounds like they're starting to contribute now.

But is there any more downtime expected with that expansion plan going forward? Or what is the cadence there that we should expect?

You shouldn't expect any significant downtime, right. As having said that, when you tie in to things, there might be a few teething pains, but it's not like this plant has to stop for a month to actually do what it's doing, right.

So I think that for your purposes at an aggregate level, is you shouldn't see any financial impact from any downtime we would have to do.

Okay, that's helpful. Just trying to get a sense, I think Joel might have alluded to this in his question, but you guys have had a couple of quarters of, I will call them operational hiccups.

I'm just trying to get a sense of whether there's any of those we should be expecting in the back half of this year, if those are well behind us now?

As we always hope, they're well behind us. There are a number of regen plant turnarounds coming up.

But those aren't unexpected by us and it kind of ties with the increased CapEx load that you always see late in the year, right?

But nothing peculiar to 2017. If anything, 2016, in Q4, we had a fair amount of downtime.

Understood. Okay.

No, that's helpful. And then just lastly on the other small expansion on the PAC side.

Just give us an update as where you're at there and whether there's any plans in the future for additional growth. It sounds like next year will not include any but down the road and broader strategic plans for that group.

Yes. So what we have is actually, I'm going to say, starting or started up, right, and the sales pipeline is filling out and we're feeling pretty good about that.

As we'll probably rest for 2018 as we survey the market and determine whether or not there's demand for us actually to either construct on our PAC plants or ACH plant. As we've said is we like those products.

They're good, sticky products. They perform well for the customer at a lower all-in cost but alum should still be the workhorse.

So we think what we have -- we think we have what we need for now, but we'll keep our eye out.

Okay, great. And just the last one actually, if I may.

It's just on the M&A front. You guys are clearly still digesting or close to, I guess, finishing here on Canexus.

But what do you see in the landscape, Mark? Do you get a sense for how the pipeline looks at this moment?

Are you interested more -- any thoughts on the broader M&A front would be helpful.

Yes. Sometimes I think I should just record this from quarter-to-quarter, so I'll try it, right?

It is, joking aside, although Canexus was a large chunk of EBITDA for us, it was a relatively small number of plants serving very, very similar customer base. And actually, their culture wasn't all that different than ours, right.

So that from an integration perspective -- although look, there's lots of people doing lots of hard work is we're well advanced on that. And since we actually don't always find assets that we like is we're always looking.

And if we find something that fits is we see whether or not we can make that happen. What I have said, I think, the last few quarters and I'll say it again, is that it looks to us as though valuations in today's world are relatively high and to make acquisitions work is you probably need to be able to realize synergies or have a good strategic reason to actually staple something on.

So we're looking. If the right thing came along, we can execute on it.

We're not interested in levering our balance sheet any further. So the valuation would have to work, but if the right thing came along, yes, we would do it.

And there's lots of stuff in the market now which is, I guess, not unusual when valuations are pretty high.

Had a couple of housekeeping questions. Rohit, depreciation for Electrochem was quite high.

I think it was $24 million in the quarter. That's much higher than the Canexus depreciation run rate.

So what's going on in that?

So what happened is when you do an acquisition as per accounting rules, this goes through right up the value of the assets to their current market value and that's what dictates the depreciation going forward because otherwise, if you had your existing business you do not write-up your value for assets. You look at divisional cost and depreciate based on that.

But when you do an acquisition, there's a purchase price allocation that requires you to write-up value of asset. And that's still, you still have a year to firm that up.

So there was some adjustments in Q2 and there maybe some further adjustments to those in Q3, but that's what really dictates the higher depreciation, amortization.

So Canexus is doing like a $50 million annual run rate for their asset. Is that about right for Electrochem, add a bit for your plant, extra plant?

Sorry, could you repeat the $50 million for what?

Well, they're running at about $50 million depreciation rate and then you add in a little bit for your own chlorate plant? Would that be right?

Okay. Yes, but you understand that what I just said was that -- yes, sorry.

So what's the run rate then, you think, for depreciation for EC going forward?

I'll probably give you that response in Q3 because Q2 had some adjustments to it. Because what happens is when you do an acquisition, you take a first kick at what you think the market values are.

Then you engage a professional valuator to come back with fair market values which we haven't received yet. So Q3, we should be able to give you a much better idea as to what a good run rate for depreciation is.

Okay, when you talk about maybe having $90 million to $100 million of maintenance CapEx next year, so I wanted to ask, does that mean that all the growth CapEx for KCl and PAC is done in '17? And then, $90 million to $100 million, does that include some initial idea of how much Brandon special CapEx will be in?

Well, I guess, we're trying to answer the question before we're ready to answer the question, right? So again, you'll get more clarity in the third quarter, right?

Around $100 million all in, is probably a good...

Including Brazil.

Including -- a good thing to assume, right.

And then my last question is, you talked about some asset regen plant turnarounds. Is that weighted to the fourth quarter or is it a little bit in Q3 as well?

They will be a little bit in Q3. But again, comparatively speaking, it wouldn't be as much as Q4 last year.

Just a follow up on the chlor-alkali side of the business. Obviously, the timing appears very good.

The business is improving. The volatility is something you've never partly appreciated.

Just curious, does that change your view of that asset and/or does that change the view of other people of that asset, and do you think that you could be considering divesting of this one earlier than previously planned?

I don't know how it changes other people's views of the asset, right. But what we said when we bought it is that we don't generally actually like volatility, as everyone knows.

But we also said that actually a piece of volatility is part of our aggregate hold and something that we don't mind living with. And especially if you actually bought it off of what appears to be a trough.

So we like the asset, we plan to keep the asset. But other people have a different view of the asset now that it's not making as much money as they might, but we're quite happy with it as part of the overall portfolio.

Thank you, everyone, for your time and attention and we look forward to talking to you next quarter.