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
Global PE and PP indexes Week Two: Asian prices recover as Europe declines continue
THESE ARE STILL extraordinary times in global polyolefins markets. Although the great equalisation has begun as pricing in most of the rest of the world falls towards Chinese levels, price premiums over China remain historically very high. There are thus still strong opportunities for exporters to make good netbacks in markets other than China.
Polyolefins pricing data suggest China still hasn’t recovered
Comparative PE and PP pricing data between Vietnam and southeast asia – and the “spreads” numbers between China PE and PP prices and naphtha costs – suggest the China economy has yet to recover.
After the COP26 disappointment, the “blame game” will get us nowhere
The implications of last week’s disappointing COP26 meeting in Glasgow are so complex and so numerous that is going to take more than one blog post to provide adequate coverage. In this first post, I look at the failure of COP26 to agree on a global carbon tax, in my view essential, and discuss the […]
China polyolefins demand declines accelerate as supply chains remain the key challenge
By John Richardson ONE OF THE golden rules that has nearly always applied over the last 20 years is that you never bet against the Chinese economy. Time and again, the doom mongers have been proved embarrassingly wrong. But we now have enough data and anecdotal evidence from 2021 to conclude that the deceleration in […]
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. […]
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 booming polypropylene demand in 2020 and what could happen next year
By John Richardson IT has been a year that just about nobody in the Asian polypropylene (PP) industry had expected back in the dark days of April. At that time, negative demand growth in China during 2020 seemed a strong possibility. What instead has taken place is a solid recovery in the Chinese economy following […]