Key chemical industry players offer bold predictions for 2008 and beyond

Who said that?

07 January 2008 00:00  [Source: ICB]

From chemical advances to Dancing with the Stars, key industry figures make their predictions for 2008 and beyond. Match the letters with the people below

A "The chemical industry will increasingly be defined by the players who have access to the feedstocks, markets and technology of the emerging world and whose people are familiar with doing business in all corners of the globe. Companies who ignore these trends do so at their peril"

B "Activists and NGOs at the forefront of the sustainable development movement will publicly and aggressively begin to champion nuclear fission as the preferred solution to the threat posed by global warming"

C "Sustainability will be one of the top CEO agenda items in 2008"

D "Reach will fail to meet its expectation of being the global model for chemicals management. It will prove to be a very burdensome program and a bureaucratic nightmare"

E "Mitt Romney will be the Republican candidate for US President and Barack Obama the Democratic candidate"

F "In 2008, Reliance Industries, India will emerge as a globally attractive polypropylene [PP] player, with likely commissioning of its new 900,000 tonne/year PP capacity"

G "The depth of a recession is difficult to call and depends on views of new capacity. I suspect that capacity increments will not be as bullish as some commentators predict and thus the depth and length of recession will not be as great as once feared"

H "Alberta's oil sands to crude oil potential is now well on its way to becoming the second-largest supply in the world. It is now a competitive potential source of petrochemicals and intermediates to the North American market and could redress the global production balance in the next decade"

I "2008 will see peak prices and profits for polyolefins, as tight supply drives margins above feedstock price increases. Selected other products will follow"

J "Former vice president Dan Quayle will win [television show] Dancing with the Stars!"

K "Growth and commercialization of biofuels and bio-based chemicals will encounter increasing resistance as the perception that acreage is being removed from food production becomes more widespread"

L "We expect growth in the US to slow somewhat, [but] we should not forget this means it will still be around 2%. That's a rate we didn't dare to dream of only a couple of years ago in Europe."

M "2008 will be the year of Reach chaos and among many other highlights will feature:

- the EU Chemicals Agency REACH-IT system in Helsinki will crash sometime in November, as everyone races to enter their preregistrations at the last minute

- at least one EU chemical company will emerge from its Tardis in 2008 and ask 'What is this Reach regulation all about? We've never heard of it!'"

N "Ongoing costs reduction in both the UK head office and, to a lesser extent, the sales force. UK head office costs need to drop by approaching 10% in 2008, with more to come in subsequent years. Inevitably this means people"

O "Soaring oil prices and climate change will favor in 2008 a shift of chemicals distribution from road to rail"

P "The paraxylene [PX] downturn will come in 2009 and if we are to believe all of the announcements being made, by 2011 the market will be at its lowest point ever, which, by any measure, is likely to be very bad!"

1 Alessandro Cataldo, Accenture

2 Joseph Acker, SOCMA

3 Michael Grabicki, BASF

4 Raj Gupta, Rohm and Haas

5 Hendrick Abma, European Association of Chemical Distributors

6 Robert Bauman, Nexant ChemSystems

7 Fred du Plessis, Kline Europe

8 Hans-Joerg Berstchi, Bertschi

9 Eric Vogelsberg, Kline

10 Ujjal De, Haldia Petrochemicals

11 Andrew Liveris, Dow Chemical

12 Frank Mitsch, BB&T Capital Markets

13 Tom Crotty, INEOS Fluor and ChlorVinyls

14 Steve Jenkins, PCI Xylenes & Polyesters

14 Paul Jukes, Arkema

15 Judith Hackitt, Health and Safety Executive

Answers:

A-11, B-4, C-1, D&E-2, F-10, G-13, H-7, I-6, J-12, K-9, L-13, M-16, N-15, O-8, P-14

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