During this downturn, razor-like focus on fluctuating netbacks and supply and demand among all the different countries and regions will allow producers to ensure that they don’t make product for markets where there is no demand, while ensuring that they take maximum advantage of many brief periods of stronger demand and pricing.
Asian Chemical Connections
SEA Asia PE market dragged lower by China now container freight rates have fallen.
The decline in container freight rates has opened the SEA PE market to more competition – pulling the region’s spreads closer to the record-low China levels
As China coal shortages end, polyolefins margins reach historic lows on oversupply
By John Richardson AGAIN, DON’T say I didn’t tell you. In my 11 October blog post, having talked to people who know what they are talking about, I flagged up the possibility that China’s energy shortages could be fixed a lot quicker than many people were suggesting. Those in the know about China told me […]
Asia PP oversupply creates major opportunity for US buyers
By John Richardson and James Ray THE BIG PRICING divergences that you can see in the above chart could very easily continue over the next few months because of any combination of the following reasons: Asia supply remains long because of weaker demand in China and southeast Asia and big increases in Chinese, South Korean […]
China PP demand slowdown accelerates in H1 as freight shortages trap oversupply
By John Richardson THE ABOVE CHART, from the new ICIS Plant Cost Evaluator, underlines the container freight challenges I’ve been highlighting for the Asian petrochemical markets since last year. How the product works is that polypropylene (PP) capacity to the left of the black line, represented by the green shaded area, is capacity that is […]
Southeast polyolefins demand growth could be negative again in 2021
By John Richardson BEFORE the pandemic, GDP growth rates in the developing world were always higher than in developed economies. And because developing economies had much lower levels of petrochemicals consumption than their rich counterparts, it meant that the multiples over GDP were higher than in the rich word, where consumption was pretty much saturated. […]
A deep dive into HDPE and PP: opportunities and challenges for H2 this year and 2022
By John Richardson Executive summary China’s petrochemicals demand boomed in H2 because of the surge in Chinese exports of finished goods that served lockdown needs in developed economies. As lockdowns ease, most of the air has escaped from what was clearly always a bubble. For example, high-density PE (HDPE) demand is set to be 9% […]
The multi-million dollar polymers opportunity: continued big regional price differentials
By John Richardson POLYMER BUYERS outside northeast (NEA) and southeast Asia (SEA) have a big opportunity to save millions of dollars on procurement costs during the rest of this year through purchasing more from the two regions. The opportunity has arisen because I believe that NEA and SEA polymer prices will remain very cheap relative […]
We can solve the plastic waste crisis but we don’t have much time
Here is another personal plea about the scale of the plastic waste challenge our industry confronts. We need to act urgently to solve disposal problems in the developing world. By John Richardson IN 2015, a global agreement was reached that 8m tonnes a year of plastic waste entering the oceans was unacceptable, according to […]
China’s PP imports in 2021 could fall by as much as 53% over last year
By John Richardson TODAY I get closer to completing my outlooks for China’s petrochemical and polymer imports in 2021 by analysing what might happen in polypropylene (PP). Later this week or next week I will complete the picture by looking at styrene monomer. Previously, I examined polyethylene (PE), where this year there is very little […]