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Asian Chemical Connections

Vaccine nationalism and lack of debt relief remain major threats to petchem growth

By John Richardson WE LIVE in a highly interconnected world as this statistic underlines: of the $18tr worth of goods that were traded last year, intermediate goods or components of finished goods represented $11tr, according to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development. In the key automotive, textile, retail and construction petrochemical end-use industries, many […]

Sustainability, the pandemic, demographics and geopolitics – how petchem companies respond will define their success

Just to stress again that this blog represents my personal views and not those if ICIS. By John Richardson YOU WILL NEED to constantly debate the details of the megatrends as they will very often change entirely. And whilst today’s four megatrends – sustainability, the pandemic, demographics and geopolitics – will remain unchanged, their relative […]

Chemicals Companies Need Security Of Demand

By John Richardson MUCH of the focus of last week’s Asia Petrochemical Industry Conference (APIC) in Singapore  once again seemed to be about feedstock advantage. This included several charts ranking the competitiveness of the three major categories of ethylene producers – naphtha-based, ethane-based and coal-based – in low, medium and high future oil price scenarios. This has […]

German Politicians Head In The Wrong Direction

By John Richardson IT took Germany’s politicians five weeks, including a final marathon 17-hour negotiating session, to agree on a “grand coalition”, points out The Economist in this article.  The trouble is that, despite this massive expenditure of hot air the deal to form a government, led by Chancellor Angela Merkel (see left), appears likely […]

Less Bling, Please

Source of picture: Luxepost.com    By John Richardson CHINA’S industrial output has had the weakest start to a year since 2009 and retail sales growth has slowed, according to this article from Bloomberg. New local-currency loans for February were also lower than the estimates of 27 out of 28 analysts in a Bloomberg News survey. […]

Innovation: No More Time Left To Lose

   Source of picture: http://whyfiles.org/    By John Richardson MY colleague Nigel Davis has written an excellent Insight article which highlights how some chemicals companies are seeking to respond to changing patterns. As we have discussed before, Bayer Material Science is adapting its portfolio of products in response to the megatrends – demographics, energy conservation, […]

Saudi Arabia’s New Export Challenge

Source of picture: Indiaagrifarms   By John Richardson Saudi Arabia continues to pursue its vision of adding social value to its hydrocarbon reserves by creating jobs. This involves going further downstream from basic petrochemicals. “The Ministry of Petroleum has said, ‘we want an end to polymer tourism’ – i.e. plastic pellets leaving the Kingdom and […]

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