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Asian Chemical Connections

China’s Demographics: What Is Your Contingency Plan?

By John Richardson DEMOGRAPHICS shape demand – everywhere, including in China, as we have been discussing since 2011. Here are a few facts about China’s demographics challenge – from this outstanding Financial Times article by David Pilling – which chemicals company executives need to print out and pin up on their boardroom walls as China heads […]

China’s Overshadowing Economic Importance

By John Richardson AS we head into this weekend’s crucial November plenum , it is worth remembering that there is no chemicals and polymers market to compare with China’s in volume terms anywhere else in Asia. Take polyproplyene (PP) as just one example. Industry estimates are that China’s consumption totalled around 16m tonnes in 2012. Its […]

European Chemicals: Rescue Efforts Continue

By John Richardson THE battle to save the European chemicals industry from widespread plant closures  is wider than just at the Grangemouth complex in Scotland, the UK In Holland, for example, the Dutch chemicals industry trade body – Vereniging van de Nederlandse Chemische Industrie (VNCI) – is asking for subsidies and tax breaks from the Dutch […]

South Korea’s Demographic Challenges

By John Richardson THE blog has been long on South Korea ever since its first visit in 1997.  Its economic achievements since the horrors of the Korean War are nothing short of amazing. Bereft of natural resources, all it has had to rely has been its intellectual capital and, wow, look at how it has […]

US Housing Recovery? What Recovery?

  By John Richardson A SUSTAINED US housing recovery is vital for the global petrochemicals industry because, without it, far too much of the 64% of ethylene capacity, which is due to be added in the States, will have to be exported in the form of derivatives. One of the reasons is that some $16,000 […]

China PE Market Strength Questioned

Dear blog reader – a  technical error, beyond our control, means that we are unable to upload the tables and graphs for today’s post. Watch out next week, as, when the problem has been solved, we will add the missing tables and graphs. Apologies….   By John Richardson THE sustainability of the strength in China’s […]

The Rebirth Of Naphtha Cracking

  By John Richardson Might cracking naphtha in Asia, Europe, and perhaps even the US, once again become so attractive that it starts to challenge the big advantage currently being enjoyed by cracking ethane? Yes, perhaps. Opportunities could arise to take advantage of distressed supplies of naphtha from refiners under severe loss-making pressure. Shutting many […]

Guaranteeing The “Trickle Down” Effect

By John Richardson THE average-paid worker in a US company has to work for more than a month to earn what her or his CEO will earn in just one hour, according to this video from Adam Mordecai – the social and political commentator. And in 2012, the richest 1% of the population took home […]

No Ethylene Margins Peak In 2016

  By John Richardson FORECASTS of European capacity closures and project delays and cancellations have led some financial analysts to the conclusion that there will be a peak in ethylene margins from 2016 onwards. This will provide a few years of very strong returns for the global industry before the big wave of US capacity […]

Searching For A Manufacturing Revival

By John Richardson WALK into any airport bookshop and you will see shelf after shelf full of management and “get rich quick” books. How many books are you likely to see on inventing things and manufacturing? Hardly any….. The danger is that whilst we busy ourselves with pouring spurious knowledge into our heads about how […]

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