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Chemicals and the Economy

CEOs face dilemma over their outlook forecast

Chemical companies are about to report excellent results for Q1. Those upstream may well record even higher profits than in 2007/8. CEOs and CFOs therefore face a critical decision. Do they assume today’s trends will continue, and forecast excellent profits for the rest of the year? This would be very tempting, and is clearly the […]

Aromatics ‘spreads’ remain stable

Benzene has always been the blog’s favourite indicator for the economic outlook. It has the most number of applications, due to its head-start in being a major product when coal was the main feedstock. Equally, paraxylene (PX) is an excellent indicator of demand in emerging economies, as their rise in living standards leads to greater […]

Weak gasoline creates benzene opportunity

Benzene markets have become increasingly volatile over the past few years. This is because there are now no major sources available of on-purpose supply, to balance demand. My speech at our Aromatics Conference in Berlin last week highlighted the changes that had taken place. Over the past 2 years, benzene spreads versus naphtha had fluctuated […]

Aromatics face challenges ahead

Attendees had a fascinating two days at our annual European Aromatics & Derivatives Conference in Berlin this week. As always, it was co-organised with ICIS, and featured a strong list of speakers: Sven Royall, VP at Shell Chemicals, put forward an optimistic outlook for benzene derivatives. He argued that substitution of PS by PP had […]

Leading industry figures at Aromatics Conference

Later this month, Berlin hosts our annual European Aromatics & Derivatives conference, held as usual with ICIS. It has one of our strongest-ever speaker line-ups, and covers a number of important areas: What next for aromatics? Sven Royall, Shell’s VP Intermediates, will present his view of the outlook for the value chain. Ralf Kuhlmann, formerly […]

Aromatics Conference ‘Early Bird’ discount till next week

Registrations are already building for our 9th European Aromatics and Derivatives Conference, to be held in Berlin on 23-24 November. Co-organised as always with ICIS, it features a strong line-up of industry speakers including: • Shell Chemicals, Sven Royall, VP Intermediates on ‘What next for Aromatics’? • Ralf Kuhlmann (former Business Director, ExxonMobil Chemicals and […]

8th European Aromatics & Derivatives Conference – Early booking discount ends Sunday

Our 8th European Aromatics & Derivatives conference, co-organised with ICIS, has a number of distinguished industry speakers including: • BASF, Jaroslaw Michniuk, Group VP, Styrenics Europe • Reliance, Rajen Udeshi, President Polyester Chain • Shell Chemicals, Jonathan Forbes-Lane, GM, Aromatics Europe In addition, the blog will be presenting its thoughts on “5 Key Steps to […]

Aromatics feedstocks: ‘Back to the Future’

For the past 40 years, the aromatics industry has usually had to ‘bid away’ its feedstock from the octane and gasoline pool. The only exception took place in S Korea during the early 1990’s, when local gasoline demand was low. This gave the new S Korean paraxylene (PX) producers the lowest cost base in the […]

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