Victorian Britain (Source of picture: Wikimedia) By John Richardson LIFE in China can be grim, much as it was in Britain during its industrial development. In China, according to The Economist: A tenth of the country’s […]
Asian Chemical Connections
Crossing The River By Feeling The Stones
Deng Xiaoping By John Richardson ANDREW Mackenzie, in his first speech in Australia as BHP Billiton’s new chief executive, said that global demand for commodities would grow by 75% over the next 15 years, driven by continuing urbanisation in China and the growth of Asia’s middle classes. The blog wishes that it shared Mr […]
Adjusting Inventories To Lower China Growth
By John Richardson EXCESSIVE inventory building across a range of commodities in China, including petrochemicals, continues to worry the blog. One reason, as we discussed yesterday, might be that traders are in the midst of a liquidity squeeze as a result of the late June credit crackdown. They have therefore taken out further very-aggressive positions […]
China Commodities Rally About Protecting Existing Debt
By John Richardson OVER the last few days we have focused on the increased risk-on trade in commodities, including petrochemicals. But maybe the rallies we have seen in products such as fibre intermediates and polyethylene (PE) are mainly about traders being forced to increase their risk profiles in order to protect existing liquidity. Here is the […]
China Export And Import Data May Obscure The Real Picture
By John Richardson CONFUSED? Perhaps, as was definitely the case last Friday, you shouldn’t be. The thrilled reaction of financial markets to the release of China’s July export and import data needs to be put into the context of it being one positive set of data in a long-running series of negative data. On the […]
More People Wanting To Buy Than Sell
By John Richardson SOME people in the petrochemicals industry are showing great confidence in the future. Perhaps it is no coincidence that several of these people are said to be Chinese domestic traders in polyethylene (PE) and mono-ethylene glycol (MEG) who might have long positions to protect. But if PE is in genuinely wonderful shape, […]
China Synthetic Fibres Recovery Questionable
By John Richardson THERE has been a strong recovery in China’s synthetic fibres value chain since May of this year, according to Becky Zhang, our excellent ICIS pricing Asian fibre intermediates and synthetic fibres editor, who keeps her finger firmly on the pulse of the market. Becky attributes the rebound to: Reports of stronger textile […]
The Great Polyethylene Mystery Hunt Continues
By John Richardson REPORTS of soaring apparent polyethylene (PE) demand (imports plus domestic production) in China continue as the search also persists for an explanation, given the country’s weak macro-economic environment. Last week we wrote of a 13% increase in demand in January-June of this year compared with the same months in 2011, based on data […]
Australia Misses China Slowdown, Faces Aus$33bn Writedown
By John Richardson THE blog was amazed over the weekend when it discovered that the country’s governing Labor Party has had to write down Aus$33.3bn in budget revenues in the space of just ten weeks, largely because it failed to forecast the extent of the slowdown in China. Australia, as a major resources exporter is, […]
Divergent China PMIs Tell Clear Story
By John Richardson CONFUSED? You shouldn’t be. Yesterday’s announcement of two Chinese purchasing managers’ indices for July, which had moved in opposite directions, merely underlines the imbalances in China’s economy. The final HSBC/Markit PMI for July came in at 47.7 – an 11-month-low and the same as the flash forecast released a couple of weeks […]
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