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Asian Chemical Connections

New IMF Report Warns On China Investment

By John Richardson CHINA’S over-dependence on investment as a driver of growth has been highlighted in a new International Monetary Fund (IMF) report. Investment accelerated between 2007 and 2011 to counter the effects of the global financial crisis, according to this Reuters report on the IMF study. “Depending on precise assumptions, over this period, China […]

Demographics And Saudi Arabia

Source of picture: Wikimedia Commons By John Richardson EIGHTY percent of Saudi Arabian families get by on incomes of less than $3,300 a month, whereas Saudi Aramco makes $900m of profits every day, says Leslie McCune, managing director of the UK-based chemicals logistics consultancy, Chemical Management Resources Ltd. But he adds that in order to […]

New Business Mindset Needed

By John Richardson THE global chemicals industry became used to healthy and steady rates of demand growth during the “Great Moderation” in the West, before the 2008 crisis. As fellow blogger Paul Hodges wrote in January of this year: “Executives could usefully spend time debating whether ethylene growth rates might be 4.2%, or perhaps 4.5%, […]

Northeast Asian PE Margins At Record Low

By John Richardson THE above slide shows how bad the polyethylene (PE) market has been in 2012. Based on data from the ICIS pricing Asian PE Margin Report, it shows how Northeast Asian high-density (HDPE) integrated variable cost margins have fallen to their lowest level since 2000. This was supposed to be a good year, […]

South Korea’s Demographic Challenges

By John Richardson SOUTH Korea serves as another example of how demographics are reshaping Asian economic prospects. “By 2018, 14% of its population will be over 65, making it officially an ‘aged society.’ That is six years sooner than Japan and more than a century before France, according to the Samsung Economic Research Institute,” writes […]

Honestly, Nobody Still Has A Clue

By John Richardson JUST as the West was lucky, so was China. The Chinese economy was also buoyed by the Babyboomers, and by its 2001 admission to the World Trade Organisation that enabled it to greatly increase its role as the workshop of the world. This came at the cost of impoverished factory workers, environmental […]

Weak PE Margins Reflect Big Picture

By John Richardson BEFORE we look at last week’s political handover in China in more detail tomorrow, while on Friday we will return to our theme of Asian demographics, the above slide illustrates what the big picture has meant for the polyethylene (PE) industry. As you can see, variable-cost margins for Northeast Asian producers fell […]

India’s “Booming” Middle Class

In the second of our series of posts on Asian demographics, we look at India. Yesterday, we summarised the overall challenges.    By John Richardson INDIA is the home of a booming middle class that voraciously consumes I-Phones, I-Pads, BMWs, foreign travel etc – all the trappings of a Western lifestyle. All that the chemicals industry […]

Asian Demographics Change Demand Patterns

THIS blog was once criticised for devoting too much time to the big picture – e.g. politics, economics and demographics – one of the major themes of our free e-book, Boom, Gloom & The New Normal. We beg to differ. While studying chemical-plant operating rates, new capacities, feedstock advantages and logistics etc are, of course, […]

Polyester Another Victim Of Hype

By John Richardson SEVERAL major petrochemical companies only have one scenario for China, which is that its economy will continue to grow at a rapid rate, the blog has been told by people working for these companies. Similarly, as fellow blogger Paul Hodges pointed out earlier this week, when the great synthetic fibre-chain investment boom was […]

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