Pushing the biofuels accelerator

Several ideas for biofuel pricing reports were presented to me when I joined ICIS in mid-2005 and I found them both appealing and easy to visualise, not least because I have a great interest in cars and surging costs in running them.

According to BP, global fuel ethanol production has doubled since 2000 and grew by another 10% in 2005 alone. You simply can’t ignore a market that is developing so rapidly and has attached to it so much new legislation that will force the world to sit up and take notice. Indeed, biofuels stories we publish on ICIS news are consistently at or near the top of the most read articles.

Ideas for price reports on fuel ethanol, ETBE (an ethanol-based octane booster for gasoline) and biodiesel originated from our European editorial team and then quickly sprang up from individuals in our Houston and Singapore offices. We are always talking to our customers about their emerging information needs and had noticed an increased number of requests for biofuels reports. I must thank these customers for giving us the impetus to pursue the ideas and for their willingness to give us feedback on our early attempts at reporting these emerging markets.

We have successfully reacted to quickly combine the knowledge and contacts from our vastly experienced editorial team with my team’s ability to project manage the development of these new products.

The European biofuels reports are now launched and have already developed a solid subscriber base. We have also launched an Asian ethanol report, which rounds off our global portfolio of ethanol reports and delivers prices and market commentary for important developing biofuels markets in India and China. We are also investigating new pricing report opportunities in the established Latin American biofuels market and in the USA, where we are hoping to leverage content from our existing ethanol reporting and where the phasing out of MTBE has resulted in an increased focus on biofuels.

I’m really looking forward to developing more biofuels products for ICIS, including enhancing coverage further on ICIS news, developing more pricing reports, online supplier search tools, jobs boards and conferences.

Our success in biofuels has also helped to open the floodgates for more groups of ideas outside of petrochemicals (such as plastics recycling), many of which we have already developed and others which we will be pursuing in the coming months.

I am impressed by the extent to which the ICIS management team is open to new ideas and that our editorial operations are not constrained by the orthodoxy of just reporting on traditional petrochemicals markets. We have a strong portfolio of market-leading petrochemical pricing reports, and are now in a position to explore other markets. Our recent acquisition of a fertiliser reporting business also helps in this process, with fertilisers feeding crops that in turn are being used to produce biofuels.

ICIS is always open to new product suggestions from our customers, so feel free to drop me a line (at simon.platt@icis.com) if you have any information needs that you would like us to consider supplying.