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Asian Chemical Connections

The Cost Versus Growth Conundrums

By John Richardson SOME petrochemicals companies believe that their big cracker and derivatives projects will produce positive returns in a few years, when, in fact, it could take much longer,  say several industry sources. The sources feel that the  growth story in emerging markets is becoming ever-more complex, involving ever-more degrees of ambiguity. Headline arguments about, for […]

Investment Theories Don’t Need To Be True

By John Richardson DEVELOPED market plastics demand is currently 15 per cent below 2007 levels, despite a modest recovery in 2010, because of two successive years of double-digit declines in 2008 and 2009, according to a new HSBC report. Some estimates suggest that developed-market demand will return to pre-crisis levels by 2015, adds HSBC. However, the […]

US PE Exports To Flood China

By John Richardson SPENDING time with your customers is always a good idea, but doing so seems to have become even more important during a very difficult year for China’s polyolefins business. The reason is a split between the fortunes of the top end of the business – the more differentiated grades of polyethylene (PE) […]

Propylene And the Law Of Unintended Consequences

Will this year’s K-Fair see some major announcements to take advantage of the relative fall in ethylene costs? Source of picture; http://www.k-online.de/   By John Richardson THE rise in the price of propylene relative to ethylene is exercising the minds of senior executives in the polypropylene (PP) industry. As fellow blogger Paul Hodges highlighted earlier […]

Co-Monomer Shortage Provides LLDPE Respite

By John Richardson AN enormous amount of new linear low-density polyethylene (LLDPE) output should, in theory, be destabilising Asian markets right now due to recent start-ups and increased production at plants brought on-stream last year and in early 2010. But the big question is to what extent global production is being constrained by a shortage […]

Polyolefins: A view from the ground

By Malini Hariharan H2 is just two months away but one China-based market participant says that there is still a total lack of clarity on price direction for the rest of the year. Buying activity picked up last week but he is not confident that this can be sustained. And he is certainly not expecting […]

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