A fantastic and prosperous Happy New Year 2012 to all Blog readers. Let's go into the new year with enthusiasm and optimism, despite all the predictions of imminent economic meltdown not to mention the Mayan End of Times prophecy for 2012.
Why not download a jolly free wallpaper and choose some small manageable resolutions to make our world a better place. All the best to you, your family and your colleagues from everyone at the Blog and elsewhere at ICIS.
Four awards went to ICIS at the RBI Achievement Awards on Monday night in
In photos:
1 Online Data Service of the Year: ICIS
2 Outstanding Achievement in Innovation: ICIS Dashboard
3 Event of the Year: ICIS World Base Oils Conference
4 Outstanding Newcomers of the Year: Joint winners: Jacqueline Savory, ICIS Heren, and Gemma Mackenzie, Farmers Weekly
ICIS had a record haul of trophies at last night's RBI Achievement Awards.
Winning in four out of the 24 categories, a strong contingent from ICIS London and Houston celebrated among the 1,500 guests at the annual awards bash for parent company Reed Business Information in London's Battersea Evolution nightclub.
Presented by cult comedy star, Jack Whitehall, the awards were for:
Photos to follow.
When it comes to spectacular conference carpets, the golden swirls on the ballroom floor at the Atlantis, The Palm, Dubai for GPCA are now considered the most splendid of all.
Surpassing even the lastingly popular psychedelic carpet of the ICIS suite in the Marriott, San Antonio at NPRA.
What was the news from EPL in
The Blog was keen to hear how broker David P's two-minute review of the year at the EPL dinner went, and various diners reported back that it was entertaining. How much the non-native English speakers understood of his references to quantitative easing creams and surfing analogies wasn't clear. One diner reported back that a joke about Jossi seemed to go on for an hour.
Another shipbroker speaker had a more downbeat message for the evening, and the dinner was rounded off with a magician who called unsuspecting but sporting people up from the audience to join in his tricks. The photo shows "Toby W being zapped at the EPL," c/o Nel.
The digital review of GPCA, published by ICIS today, is a combination of video interviews and top quality photos from the event.
Including interviews with Mohamed Al-Mady, Hamad Al-Terkait, Tom Crotty and Stephen Pryor by our own John Baker, the digital review is in addition to the official conference publication, which was distributed at the conference.
China's energy policy is investigated in this analysis from Kawai Wong, senior editor on the ICIS World Crude Report.
Download the crude oil analysis and access in-depth information on China's oil and petroleum products industry and its potential impact on the rest of the world.
The official supplement for the GPCA (Gulf Petrochemicals & Chemicals Association) conference was produced by ICIS and distributed to all delegates there. Now stay-at-home conference followers can leaf through the full supplement from the comfort of their desks.
The seventh edition of the annual GPCA (Gulf Petrochemicals & Chemicals Association) conference will be held on 27-29 November 2012 in Dubai, the GPCA said on Thursday (reported on ICIS news by William Lemos.)
The 2011 event, which closed on Thursday, drew 1,611 attendees, a record figure, the group said.
The Fertiliser Association of India 2011 annual seminar took place in New Delhi last week with 1,600 delegates, amongst them ICIS's Rebecca Clarke ...
"It was my first time at the conference and also in India. I managed to get a bit of sightseeing in with a couple of hours in a car around Delhi - most of which was spent in traffic jams and with my fingers crossed that we wouldn't get hit by anything at roundabouts where the local custom seems to be just to pull out rather than waiting for a gap in the traffic.
I visited India Gate - where I seemed to be as much of an attraction to the visiting school children with long blonde hair - and also paid a trip to the 12th Century Qutub Minar.
On the second evening I had a bit of dilemma after being invited to three different parties all at the same time - I managed to attend two of them, one of which held by Sun International, Qafco and Foskor where guests were greeted by elephants and camels at the entrance! Overall a very enjoyable experience and a worthwhile conference to attend."
Swiss petrochemical trading and marketing company Aectra has been bought by Saudi International Petrochemical Company (Sipchem), on the sidelines of the GPCA conference in Dubai on Wednesday.
For the full details see Luqman's article on ICIS news, and Prema's in-depth interview with Sipchem, following the acquisition.
Styron Europe GmbH is moving to a new office in Horgen, Switzerland from 3 January 2012, the company informed contacts by email today.
All the employees who were previously located at the ex-parent company Dow's offices in Bachtobelstrasse, Horgen, will move to the new office. Those from the Latex Pilot Coater in Samstagern will remain at that location.
Our own Rebecca C has been doing some seasonal shopping and writes to the Blog ...
"Knowing the Blog's love of acrylonitrile-butadiene-styrene (ABS) Lego, even with the current self imposed diet, I couldn't help but notice these cuff links while browsing the internet for Christmas gifts over the weekend!! I think they're the perfect gift for gentlemen in the chemical industry!"
To celebrate the launch of the new ICIS.com site, with a sprinkle of holiday spirit thrown in, we are giving you the opportunity to win a magnum of champagne to start the New Year 2012 with a fizz.
To be in with a chance of winning, all you have to do is enter one of three quizzes. Each quiz contains ten questions and a tie-breaker. (Clue: Blog readers will find one of the chemical questions particularly easy.)
Closing date for entries is: Thursday 12th January 2012.
The results and winners for each quiz will be announced in the last week of January 2012.
The 6th Annual GPCA (Gulf Petrochemicals & Chemicals Association) Forum in
In comparison, EPCA 2011 had 2,500 delegates. NPRA had 2,800 delegates. APIC was slightly above 1,300 in Japan this year. APLA had 892 delegates.
Click here for ICIS news coverage from GPCA
London is back in favour as an ICIS Training venue, with delegates at this week's seminars noting how cheap they were finding the trip, not to mention the pre-Xmas shopping, especially those of them exchanging Swiss francs. The five days of training seminars at the new location at County Hall are still in progress, but the Blog was speaking on just two of the days and is already back in the office.
Delegates were very multinational - from all over Europe plus the Middle East and Nigeria. They had some interesting questions about European contract prices, particularly the concept of the single number contract reference price, which since last week now embraces styrene too.
The second Russian Polymers Summit, organised by MRC and supported by ICIS, took place in Moscow last week.
One of the keynote speakers was Sibur president Mr Dmitry Konov, captured here in a pre-conference interview with MRC.
Click here for Sergei Blagov's article for ICIS news on Mr Konov's speech and the key themes from the summit.
Our own Linda Naylor was speaking on the European polymer outlook, along with a roster of eminent Russian industry figures, and a few photos have found their way back to the Blog thanks to our London colleagues Irina and Vadym who were also attending the conference.
There was a light snowfall while they were there, but it had been a lot colder, Irina tells me with disappointment.
The one-day Summit format works very well in this market, with most delegates coming from Russia and the CIS. Questions for the speakers had been submitted online in the weeks before the conference, allowing for some online discussion of the key topics beforehand.
MRC and ICIS took advantage of the event to announce the imminent launch of the ICIS-MRC PET report, now the fifth of our joint weekly pricing reports covering Russia and the CIS.
While I was at ICIS training in London this week, my fellow blogger Paul Hodges of "Chemicals in the Economy" was passing through St Pancras Station when he espied the famous environmentally friendly (reusable ABS) Lego Xmas tree and immediately whipped out his camera to snap this photo for my Blog.
The Blog had never ever read a zombie book or watched a zombie film (unless we count Sean of the Dead), and was quite happy to keep things that way until the news broke that Brad Pitt was at the INEOS Grangemouth chemicals site making a film of the zombie book "World War Z."
Next thing I know, the Blog son had brought the book home and recommended it as a very good read. Incredulous though I was, there inevitably came a time when I was looking for something to read and gave it a go.
So now I have read it, and despite the book not having a single mention of Grangemouth or a chemical plant, it really is quite good.
It is written as a series of personal testimonies about a global pandemic and Armageddon-style total war, from the outbreak, through the war years, to the bleak aftermath. As a war memoir, it is interesting and for the most part, quite gripping, but you really have to disregard all the coverage of zombies.
You could even imagine that the writer was a war journalist who had tried his hand at popular fiction, but that is clearly not the case, because it seems that the writer has written a whole series of zombie books including a survival guide, an illustrated version and a graphic novel. The Blog is not in the least bit tempted.
