September 2010 Archives

What shall we conclude from the Sold Out status of the two ICIS Training seminars in Amsterdam today and tomorrow?

• That Amsterdam is a popular location?
• That September-December is a popular time for training, with budget needing to be spent?
• That the petchem biz is picking up?
• That lots of Bright Young Things are in new jobs?
• That a great deal of corporate knowledge has been lost in staff turnover?

Today's "Petrochemicals Part 1: An Introduction to the Industry" went swimmingly, with a group of delegates weighted unusually heavily on the side of buyers.

It's certainly very buzzy having a big group, especially in the break-out sessions.

As usual, there were some delegates who'd made a super-human effort to be there. The ones who'd travelled the greatest distances for the training were from Brazil and Belarus. Not a bad effort.

During my Pricing and Markets presentation, there were questions on manipulation, forecasting, assessment methodology, how traders work arbitrages, the ARG and how genuine the slew of shutdowns and forces majeures was.

At last it was lunch, and the talk was about the current shortages of product and high prices, caused by shutdowns earlier in the year. It was quite an eye-opener to hear this all from buyers.

I've had a sneak preview on Taru's SLR camera of her moody close-up shots of speakers and delegates, and am looking forward to getting those on the Blog this week. She was also doing some video testimonials for the ICIS Training website, which should be a bit of fun from what I saw during the filming.

Off to dinner now with the training team in the Beethovenstraat...

(Photos to follow when I get them from Taru.)

No sooner had the Blog finished cackling at the idea that there might be something green about buying bottled water, than another environmentally-friendly water-related plastics marketing genius hits the headlines.

The makers of Bobble - a reusable bottle - claim it can filter tap water to a purity that rivals mineral water. It has been launched in the US, where sales are expected to pass the one million dollar mark by the end of September, and it was launched in the UK in August. Selling from up market department store Harvey Nichols at £10 a piece, sales have apparently been "outstanding."

The Bobble is fitted with a carbon filter that removes chlorine and contaminants from tapwater and can be used up to 300 times before the filter needs replacing. It is of course made from plastic, and comes in some nice Day-Glo colours.

The Blog had to laugh on reading the Bobble CEO's comment in the Grocer magazine: "It's the first consumer product that has really given people an alternative to bottled water." Oh please.

Paying for bottled water in a country where the tapwater is perfectly drinkable still makes the Blog grind its teeth in irritation. So for UK folk who insist on carrying water around in case they expire from dehydration while out on a stroll in our cool and rainy climate, there is good news that Volvic has launched what it claims is the UK's first recyclable bottle made partially from sugarcane waste.

The new bottles, rolling out in the UK in December 2010, will be made from 25% recycled plastics derived from used bottles and BioPET, a new plant-based plastic developed by brand owner Danone.

BioPET is made from PET and fermented and dehydrated sugarcane waste, which will produce bottles with 20% plant material content, according to this article.

Tupperware's top North American saleswoman is a fabulous blonde drag queen, performing as Miss Dee W Ieye, who sells so many plastic storage products in her raunchy parties that she has beaten all competition for the fourth consecutive year.

Actor Kevin Farrell does a 50-minute routine, for a minimum of 30 people at each party and minimum sales of $1,500. He says understandably: "I don't want to spend an hour putting on make-up for six girls."

Showing an acute grasp of plastics demand in an economic downturn, he adds: "Everyone needs to maximize their grocery dollar in today's economy ... Tupperware's exceptional reputation and my down home charm and girl next door looks keep my Tupperware business THRIVING in a down economy. $20,000 in average monthly sales keeps me at the top of the sales chart!"

My fellow ICIS blogger Simon Robinson has just returned from a week in the ICIS Chemical Business (ICB) office in New York, and is feeling that he has a lot to get off his chest. Here is a heavily expurgated version of his experiences with New York taxi cabs ...

Being yellow on the outside New York cabs are obvious and the one clear advantage that they have over London cabs is that you can easily tell when they are for hire. Other than that it is hard to spot any benefits. The interiors are cleverly coloured a dirty dark grey. The seats are the kind of vinyl that your legs stick to if you are in shorts and which are guaranteed to make you sweat uncontrollably if the temperature gets over 20 deg C.

 

In my experience in London, I've never been in a cab where the driver stopped next to fellow cabbie to give him a mouthful for not going quite fast enough.

It's 24 September and you know what that means. Happy 3^rd Birthday to the Blog!

I can hardly believe I've got away with it this long.

That's a total of 976 postings.

If I had devoted that much early morning time to something useful like learning Mandarin or getting a flat stomach, I'd have been there by now.

Nadja Weiss is now PTA Marketing and Sales Manager at Artenius Sines PTA, SA, she announced on LinkedIn today.

She left her former position as Regional Manager Aromatics E/A/ME at Chevron Phillips Chemicals International NV in June 2010.

I've just read "The Great Disappointment follows the Great Recession" by Paul Hodges, the Vince Cable of the chemical industry. It certainly brought me down to earth after yesterday's excitement.

Not that there's anything wrong with Vince Cable, who happens to be my local MP and is roundly adored by all his constituents. Returned with 54% of the vote in this year's elections, no local gathering of neighbours or school parents is complete without someone singing his praises.

And in the next door constituency we have newly elected Zac Goldsmith - billionaire environmentalist playboy MP - also the topic of much local and national gossip - but the Blog is confident in predicting that he won't last past the next election. I know the electors of Richmond Park and we are easily bored. We crave novelty. Next time it will have to be a filmstar or lingerie model or talking pet, although no doubt we will soon be bored with that.

Filmstar politicians do tend to last quite well. Glenda Jackson, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Imran Kahn, Ronald Reagan ... (already bored with this list.)

Three new editorial appointments at ICIS were announced today:

• Barbara Ortner, to Head of Market Reporting
• Stephen Burns, to Head of News and Analysis
• Shelley Kerr, to Managing Editor Europe

A spray-on T-shirt was demonstrated by a Spanish fashion designer in advance of the Science in Style show at Imperial College, London this week, according to an article in the Guardian.

The spray consists of short fibres that are mixed into a solvent, allowing it to be sprayed from a can or high-pressure spray gun. The fibres are mixed with polymers that bind them together to form a fabric. The texture of the fabric can be varied by using wool, linen or acrylic fibres.

The experience did not appear to be too uncomfortable, judging by the expression of gum-chewing indifference on the face of the male model in the video, although the manufacturer says that the fabric, which dries when it meets the skin, is very cold when it is sprayed on.

Complaints about BP being allowed to sponsor the arts seem to have disappeared in an oily haze. In fact the whole subject has gone dead.

It's another win-win arts sponsorship deal for BP and Tate Britain's current "Romantics" exhibition. BP gets the exposure as a philanthropical organisation, and London gets a world-class nine-room display including Turner, Constable and Blake.

The winning caption in the annual "Comical Processing" competition is:

"I think we should see other people. Well I should see other people. You should see a doctor."

The winner was announced today on ChemicalProcessing.com.

Browsing through the runners up, the Blog's choice would have been:

"Let's put it this way, you're not doing much to kill the stereotype about research engineers."

I thought this series would be about scenic locations for petrol stations, but now I see that there is a whole school of thinking which views the station itself as a thing of beauty.

Only in America - the Top 15 Modernist Gas Stations on oobject.com.

The ICIS Training caravan has been in Houston, Texas this week, and my colleague Peter Taffe has sent back these photos.

He tells me: "Two of the pics are Judith Taylor delivering a pricing paper. The other two are from the break out session where teams have to develop projects in different parts of the world. One team shown had South America as its region - came up with an idea for a PVC project in Brazil to meet new construction activity as a result of the World Cup and Olympics to be held in Brazil. The other team had North America and came up with an idea to revamp its steam cracker to take advantage of lighter feedstocks."

Having mastered the Serbo-Croat languages with great ease on holiday this year, the Blog is feeling quietly confident about revisiting the Hungarian language while at EPCA in Budapest in three weeks' time. Here are a few tips for fellow travellers:

Blog Croat vocabulary

Motorway toll: cestarina

With a drop of milk please: mlijeko

Thank you: hvala vam

Pancakes: palačinke

Is service included? je usluga uključeni?

Can we have our ball back? možemo imati našu loptu natrag?

Yes I speak Serbo-Croat fluently: da ja govorim tečno serbo croat

Blog Hungarian vocabulary

For sale: Eladó

Is service included? a szolgáltatás is?

Turkey: pulyka

Pancakes: palacsinta

Extra strong paprika: erős paprika

Is this the train to Balaton? ez a vonat a Balaton?

Yes these are my children: igen, ezek az én gyermekeim

Happy travelling. 

Geeks and nerds - I didn't know there was any difference, but now I've been put straight on the matter. Thank you Jonny.

This will be of interest to petchem folk of a scientific or techie background, or those like myself who walk among them.

It seems that the distinctions hinge on the degree of intelligence, obsession and social ineptitude, but as you can imagine in that bunch, there is an extensive debate raging about definitions in some fine nit-picky and not entirely tongue-in-cheek detail.

(diagram: greatwhitesnark.com)

Can you imagine taking a two-day train ride from Shanghai to London? Or Singapore to London? What a fantastic trip that would be, and irresistible to all those European petchem travellers to the Asian business hubs. I just can't wait.

My eye was caught by an inspirational map of the proposed high speed rail route across Asia and Europe in an article in the Times (subscription-only). I'll be packing my fake Louis Vuitton steamer trunk just as soon as it's built (in 2020.)

Alternative links:

Kings Cross to Beijing in two days on new high-speed rail network

China to build 2bn railway for Iran

China promotes its transcontinental ambitions with massive rail plan

(map: thetransportpolitic.com)

The spirit of enterprise is alive and well at this boating shack I saw this summer on the harbour outside the Riverside Restaurant at West Bay, Bridport on the Dorset coast.

Scrumpy is a noxious apple-based alcoholic drink which underpins the shaky economies of Somerset, Dorset, Devon and Cornwall in England's West Country. On a rain-soaked August morning, we find ourselves running for cover into a remote distillery which is warm and welcoming and full of the comforting aromas of apples and alcohol.

The scrumpy is dispensed into plastic flagons from two great barrels behind the counter - one medium, one dry. We are given two murky thimblefuls to taste. The medium one is dry enough to take the enamel off your teeth and rip out your stomach lining in one go. The dry one leaves you gasping for air and bereft of the power of speech. It's a hard call.

The tattooed guy next to me is coming back for a 5 litre refill of the dry scrumpy, but we opt for the 2.5 litre flagon of medium. It is 6% alcohol, and the taste will overpower any food. Still it is one of those drinks like ouzo or retsina or gentian which you drink on holiday and it seems like a good idea at the time.

(photo: Jack Ratt scrumpy from Lyme Bay Winery)

The new ICIS Top 100 Chemical Companies listing is published today in ICB, and it's free at this link.

The Blog can reveal that the top three are: BASF, Dow, ExxonMobil.

"The ICIS Top 100 lists the major global chemical producers, ranked by sales for 2009. The Top 100 provides key financial data for the largest companies in the chemical industry. It lists a range of financial information from top line sales to bottom line profits for players whose products help drive manufacturing and the global economy.

The Top 100 list confirms that 2009 was a year of turmoil, but many companies have emerged from the downturn in solid shape."

"Wolf Hall," winner of the 2009 Man Booker Prize, is the book that everyone is reading on the beach this year, according to "I-Spy for Adults" in the Times.

I borrowed it and read it in the Devon garden of our house swap friends in between bouts of summer rain.

Set in the 1520s, it is understandably lacking in direct reference to the petchem business, but it's strong on the inter-weaving of politics and finance, on trading, banking, religion and kings.

In this passage, Thomas Cromwell, self-made man with a background in the military, trading, banking and the law, threatens to destroy a bankrupt aristo who doesn't realize that it's all about the money.

How can he explain it to him? The world is not run from where he thinks. Not from his border fortresses, not even from Whitehall. The world is run from Antwerp, from Florence, from places he has never imagined; from Lisbon, from where the ships with sails of silk drift west and are burned up in the sun. Not from castle walls, but from counting houses, not by the call of the bugle but by the click of the abacus, not by the grate and click of the mechanism of the gun but by the scrape of the pen on the page of the promissory note that pays for the gun and the gunsmith and the powder and shot.

Luol Deng, basketball superstar, returned to the town in oil-rich Southern Sudan where he was born, I heard in a moving BBC Radio 4 documentary during the holidays.

It was the moving story of his family's escape from the civil war in Sudan, to his childhood in the UK, and his basketball career in the US, where he is now an NBA superstar. The one-time refugee was coming home for the first time in 20 years, speaking to a bunch of excited schoolchildren about the importance of working hard and becoming the next leaders of their country.

He was speaking ahead of Southern Sudan's referendum in January 2011, on independence from Khartoum.

Sudan is sub-Saharan Africa's third biggest oil producer. In the peace agreement five years ago, the north and south agreed to split revenues from the industry. However, while the bulk of the oil lies in the south, the north controls the refineries, the ports and the payments.

(photo: BBC)

In a new series of Most Picturesque Petrol Stations (gas stations) of the World, this one on the Istrian coast must be a strong contender. On the shores of the Adriatic, with a backdrop of pines, an old red-roofed hill-side village and the Croatian mountains, it's going to be hard to beat.

Alexis Swine will take over as commercial manager styrene Europe at Total Petrochemicals, covering for the maternity leave of Audrey Wattiez from 13 September, the company announced in an email to business partners on 10 September.

Swine, formerly business intelligence manager within the Total styrenics team, will take over the Brussels-based role during Audrey Wattiez's maternity leave from 13 September until the beginning of February 2011.