The beauty pageant for the title Miss Plastic 2010 sounds like something that is open to employees of polymer manufacturers, rather like Miss Atom in the Russian nuclear industry, but is in fact for surgically enhanced ladies.

The contest is held where else but in Budapest, Hungary, which will come as no surprise to those of us who witnessed the Pearl of the Danube beauty pageant during EPCA 2010 in Budapest.

Miss Plastic 2010 will be chosen from 22 contestants in the national round of the competition, and prizes are awarded to both the beauty queen and her surgeon, according to this article in the Metro.

The Blog can't wait to cover the next stage of the competition, which will be Miss Plastic Universe.

(photo: Metro)

The ICIS conference team took a few photos during the presentations on the first day (23 November) of the Aromatics Conference in Berlin.

1, 2 Opening the conference

3 Sven Royall, Shell

4 Alastair Hensman, Nexant

5 Panel: John Keeley, Sven Royall, Ralf Kuhlmann

6 Piet Vermeersch, Total

Heavy security at the Berlin airports on account of the terrorist alert caused some delays on arrival for delegates travelling to the ICIS Aromatics Conference, and the closure of the Reichstag on Monday prevented at least one attendee from completing a pre-conference tour.

Undeterred by the cold and the rain, delegates were able to wander through the pretty Xmas Market in the nearby Gendarmenmarkt on their way to some pretty good dinners.

If this conference has to be November (and I tried to move it to December next to the EPL but was rebuffed) then can't we go somewhere warm? This is our third time in Berlin in the last 13 months (EPCA, Training/Phenol Conference, Aromatics), and we already know that the 2011 EPCA will be back here. I think that's enough of Berlin. I'm hoping the delegate feedback forms will support Barcelona, Madrid, Milan, Athens ....

Never one to sink to gossip and trivia itself, the Blog couldn't help but overhear a few choice titbits at the Aromatics Conference:

• One well-known trader, currently resting between jobs after an Asian holiday, is about to join (in January) another trading house, the name of which is apparently common knowledge around the business.

• Employees of a major petchems company who are currently being relocated to a more mountainous country are the focus of some unwelcome extensive attention from their home local tax authorities.

• The new owner of a petchem company dear to the Blog's heart could be named in the coming weeks.

• The circular atrium of the conference hotel, the Berlin Grand Westin, was the location for the filming of The Bourne Supremacy.

Sitting again in the Segafredo café in Berlin Tegel departure lounge, I can see my two articles from this morning have gone up on the website, and there's time to reflect on the Aromatics Conference...

It really was the best speaker line-up ever, and one we'll never be able to repeat.

I enjoyed the cosy double-act with the Dow and Styron speakers, where the former colleagues batted questions to each other. I liked Jeff D's observation that this would be his "first opportunity to play the customer card - I'll expect certain treatments," he said.

Hans vdK touchingly had his wife in the audience to see his much vetted presentation on life after Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

Gianluca's description of the place of petchems in Italian economic and political life had a lot of humour, particularly the wonderful maps showing the wild movements of aromatics back and forth across the sea between Sardinia, Sicily and Venice. He introduced me to the expression "Cathedral in the Desert," which is an accurate description of at least one large chemical plant's location in the middle of nowhere.

Piet V, standing bravely without crutches, got a good laugh when he plotted his own career against a graph showing the peaks of 1995 and 2000 and the recent slump in styrene cash margins.

Andrew J's slides had mysteriously lost all their titles, so the audience was kept alert by having to write the screen titles onto the hard copy, rather like a children's fill-in-the-blanks quiz.

For a European conference, we had some surprisingly long-haul participants. With the event set the day before the US Thanksgiving holiday, it was very sporting of our one American speaker to offer to take a morning slot before catching an afternoon flight back to his family celebrations. Our one speaker from China had also made a heroic journey all the way from her Beijing home for the two days.

I noticed that we had a slew of small-print disclaimers up on the screen from the majors. Certainly lawyers played a significant role in combing through presenters' papers before the event. One speaker's paper took so long to pass through various approvals that it wasn't available in time to be printed for the conference booklet.

PHOTOS to follow

For all the news articles by Julia, Truong, Peter T, Elaine and me, see http://www.icis.com/news/news.aspx?label=headlines.

The Chemical Industries Association (CIA) Dinner was a grand affair as always, with 980 guests in London's Grosvenor House Hotel for a black tie dinner on Thursday 18 November.

There were two splendid speakers, Dr Vince Cable, UK Secretary of State for Business, and Sir Ranulph Fiennes the explorer - but good as they were, two speakers at a dinner is one too many, and it was a long old evening sitting at the table.

My heart sank when I saw the programme and realised we would be sitting down for three hours. As it turned out, everything ran late, and we didn't get up from the tables until 11.15 pm, at which time everyone was running for the doors.

The whole point of producing a glossy programme, showing who's sitting on whose table, is so that everyone can get round to talk to each other, but there was no time for that.

Vince was on good form. He talked about his time working for Shell, where as chief economist he had the thankless task of trying to predict the chemical cycle. He said that Shell was a very good company and he was proud to have worked for it, because it made massive investments and thought long term. That experience had taught him to be sceptical of critics of the chemical industry, he added.

He said that most chemical business was global, and that the UK government was clear that it needed a trade liberalising agenda. His defence of the science budget, his support of apprenticeships, and his praise for the chemical industry for being export-oriented - "90% of chemicals exported, unmatched in UK industry" - all went down well with his audience.

I was on a non-betting table, but Richard L told me afterwards that he had won the jackpot on his table for getting the length of the Fiennes speech bang on at 35 minutes.

(Photo CIA)

A male comfort drink in a plastic bottle has been launched to help soothe men who suffer from colds, according to an article in the Grocer.

The lemon-lime and honey flavour "Manflu" drink, sold as "comfort and sympathy in a bottle" will be a welcome antidote to the illness manflu, the severity of which is not widely appreciated outside male circles.

According to the Grocer, the drink can be drunk on the go as a shot, or poured into a mug and mixed with hot water.

Women, wise up. Buy a multi-pack, and keep one in the car, one in the office and one in your handbag. You need never be accused of a sympathy shortfall again.

(photo: manflu) 

Swedish designers have come up with a cycling "collar" which has an airbag hidden inside. In a collision, the Hovding airbag - made from a polymer bag, helium and sensors - inflates around the cyclist's head to form a helmet, according to an article in the Evening Standard.

All the commentary in the Standard and other publications has focused on how this is the perfect answer to cyclists who choose not to wear a helmet because it spoils their hair.

Readers with a strong stomach can watch a video of the airbag in action: 

Injection moulding machines across the world are poised for a plastic souvenir bonanza, following yesterday's announcement of the Royal Wedding.

Amongst the acres of coverage about the design of the engagement ring and the wedding dress, and how they will inspire all of next year's brides to buy the same, there is so far little coverage of the containers full of plastic knick-knacks which will be heading for the impressionable markets of Europe and the US.

The Blog is looking forward to the souvenir plates, the masks, the ornaments, the lunchboxes, the badges, the mouse mats and the tee shirts, all of which will stimulate much-needed demand for traditional polymers.

I shall be clearing a space among the conference freebies on the cabinet in the office, shoving aside all the priceless tat from K-2010, to make room for an extensive collection of Royal Wedding memorabilia. All donations accepted.

The wife of a Russian fertilizer tycoon is demanding $6 billion in a divorce settlement which is set to be the largest in history, according to an article in the Daily Mail.

The secrecy-loving billionaire made his fortune from the Uralkali potash mining company, and is estimated to be the world's 79^th richest person.

He is in his early 40s, and recently bought Donald Trump's $100 million Palm Beach mansion, according to the Mail.

(photo: Daily Mail)

The Blog is indebted to an industry friend for pointing out that Unigas formerly had a ship called the Lady Barbara, and a whole fleet of prettily named vessels like the Pretty Lady and the Happy Bride.

The convention of using feminine pronouns when referring to ships may be fading away in public usage, but it is noticeable that people in the chemical shipbroking business still say "she" when talking about their ships.

The history of this is supposed to be that sailors were considered to be "married to the sea" because of their love of the ocean. As a compliment to women, they named their ships after them. Even when ships were no longer given women's names, they were still referred to as "she" because of "a captain's love for his ship."

(Photos: Lady Barbara,  Pretty Lady, Happy Bride: Unigas)

Ed Cox of ICIS Heren returns from a night to remember in the old Berlin Tempelhof airport. He tells the Blog ...

"You may remember my post from last year in Buenos Aires, when Russia's Gazprom stole the show at the World Gas Conference by building an ice palace in the exhibition centre. 

Gazprom then flew in young Olympic champion skaters to show their skills in front of some baffled business men. That was impressive but this week's Gala dinner at the European Gas Conference in Berlin was definitely better.

One of the major German companies, RWE, managed to hire out the entire Tempelhof airport - which closed a couple of years ago - and put on an evening of entertainment for several hundred conference guests. It was a surreal experience walking round an empty old airport with familiar signs - 'departure gates', 'passport checks' but no flights to catch.

The training team have just finished doing the petrochemical seminars in Philadelphia at the Chemical Heritage Foundation. Peter T writes ...

One photo shows Kati from the museum explaining the production and uses of Bakelite, which is considered to be the first fully synthetic polymer. Another photo shows her explaining the development of synthetic dyes to the delegates - they look to be sharing some joke! The third shows the giant electronic periodic table in the museum.

Vopak's late-night party on the Monday at EPCA on a boat sailing down the Danube was one of the social highlights of the conference, according to all the usual suspects.

It was with trepidation that the Blog clicked through on the link to the party photos, which Vopak emailed round to its guests today. Here are a few of our favourites ...

China is not a low wage economy, it is a low margin economy, a contact based in Shanghai told me in a meeting at EPCA.

He illustrated this with a tale of his own experiences in the city.

Fake DVDs could commonly be had for yuan (CNY) 9 ($1.35, €0.99, £0.84) which was cheap enough for expats, but then one day a colleague was boasting about being able to source them for CNY 5. Then that became the norm, he said.

It is the same with made-to-measure men's suits, he added.

A top of the range suit from a good tailor with all the desired detailing: four-button cuffs, monogrammed lining, etc was normally around CNY 6,000 ($900, €660, £560) - but now colleagues have found a place where the same can be had for CNY 4,000 - and now everyone wants that price.

And so it goes on, with everyone driving down prices which were cheap enough to begin with, and the hunt for ever-lower prices becomes a national sport.

(Photo pirate DVDs in Shanghai Market, Rex)

The Blog has had a sneak preview of five video interviews with industry leaders at K-2010 last week in Dusseldorf. Senior figures from Songwon, Rhodia, Borealis, Bayer Material Science, Clariant and SABIC talk to ICIS about what they were showing at K and their plans for the future.

Each clip, gathered by our video team of Simon and John is just a few minutes long, and they will be put together in a digital inter-active review of K, which will be sent out to the ICIS audience today and tomorrow.

Be sure to catalogue all the plastic freebies you pick up from exhibitors' stands, my friend Alessandro messages me at the K-fair in Dusseldorf.

This kind of declaration chimes well with the RBI anti-corruption training, which requires all employees to declare all gifts and refrain from accepting anything over a nominal value.

In this spirit, I confess that I have returned from K with the following goodies:

• One green stress  ball in the shape of an apple
• One green notepad
• One ICIS pen
• One blue plastic shopping bag labelled "BASF Plastics key to your success"
• One SABIC sail-shaped small packet of mints

I failed to get the exhibition's must-have give-aways: the curly walking stick, the shiny briefcase (pictured, from the KraussMaffei stand), or the picnic chairs - all of which would have involved walking an extra mile to Halls 10-17.

(photo: www.k-online.de)

Bookings for the NPRA International Petrochemical Conference (IPC) have opened today, with bounteous discounts on registrations and hotels, according to an email to members today.

The conference will be at the Grand Hyatt San Antonio on 27-29 March 2011.

The featured speaker for the IPC Luncheon on the Tuesday will be Fox Business Host, John Stossel who will address "US Manufacturing and the Global Economy."

This week's issue of The Economist (30 Oct - 5 Nov 2010) is full of chemical and energy-related adverts, but this BASF ad opposite the contents page at the front of the magazine is the most striking.

Topically in the week of the K-fair in Dusseldorf, the advert shows an assortment of plastic automotive components laid out in the shape of a butterfly.

The message is that "Car parts made with BASF plastics can be used instead of metal parts to make vehicles lighter and therefore more fuel-efficient."

The print edition of The Economist also has a full page ad for GE showing a jet engine in the heart of a sunflower, another BASF ad with cute green shoots in test tubes, a two-page spread for Shell on passing "energy on to the next generation" illustrated by Japanese children at play, and then three full pages for Chevron on "Big Oil."