By John Richardson IT HAS been an amazingly half a century of innovation for the petrochemicals industry. The light-weighting of automobiles, combined with booming demand for autos, has delivered many billions of dollars of value to companies. The latest figures from the American Chemistry Council, which only cover North America, give a pointer towards the […]
Asian Chemical Connections
China’s time poor, cash rich will want less PP and not more
By John Richardson LAST month I gave you the downside of urbanisation in China and how this could result in 7m tonnes of lower polyethylene (PE) demand in 2030 than we assume in our base case. A very good contact of mine has however pointed out this fascinating article from the World Economic Forum on […]
Rise in sustainable mobility on new social trends: Impact on PP
By John Richardson ENVIRONMENTAL concerns over wasting the earth’s resources are one factor behind the rise of Uber and other ride-hailing services as a replacement for car ownership in cities. But in heavily congested cities, large several-tonne lumps of metal and plastic still spend a lot of time in traffic jams, even with clever routing […]
Butadiene Oversupply Threat
By John Richardson THERE is a lot of talk at the moment about on-purpose butadiene, via the butane dehydrogenation process, because of the recent extreme market tightness . The tightness is the result of a shift to lighter cracker feedstocks and reduced operating rates at naphtha crackers in Europe. Future feedstock patterns are also not […]
Crunch time for Asian polyolefins
By Malini Hariharan August could well be the time for some tough decisions by Asian polyethylene (PE) and polypropylene (PP) producers. Demand has languished for the last three months and although many are hoping for a recovery at the end of this month or in early August, there are as yet no signs of this. […]
India growth story – Part 3
By Malini Hariharan Some numbers today on Indian polyolefin and polyvinyl chloride (PVC) demand growth during April-December 2009. The strong growth trend noticed in the early part of last year continued and belied earlier expectations of a slowdown because of a drought over parts of India. PVC and polypropylene (PP) recorded the fastest growth rates […]
China takes care of 2010
By Malini Hariharan After sorting out 2009 with a huge stimulus package the Chinese government is busy ensuring that there will be no slowdown next year. A number of measures have been announced to sustain growth in the domestic market. Subsidies on sales on home appliances in rural areas are being extended. The auto sector […]
“Real” people start to suffer even more
Bradford and Bingley, UK, auto industry, consumer spending, plastic packaging, financial meltdown