By John Richardson IT is all about jobs, jobs and more jobs in politics. Promising to create and maintain employment is how politicians win office. And delivering on these two pledges keeps them in power. But let’s not by cynical about this. You can make a very strong argument that whilst keeping a particular factory […]
Asian Chemical Connections
Asian Polyethylene: Challenge The New Paradigm
By John Richardson IT would be very interesting to go back to 2000 and compare the strength of positive sentiment towards the future of the Asian polyethylene (PE) industry to the above chart. The chart shows spreads between naphtha costs, which is the main feedstock for making PE in Asia, and the prices for one […]
Oil Storage, China Credit Threaten Crude-Price Rally
By John Richardson MANAGE your naphtha and other raw material inventories incredibly carefully over the next few months, as you cannot afford to believe the hype that oil prices have definitively, without doubt, bottomed out. This has to be the only sensible approach for petrochemicals companies, given that: The hedge funds and pension funds poured […]
Chemicals Companies Need Security Of Demand
By John Richardson MUCH of the focus of last week’s Asia Petrochemical Industry Conference (APIC) in Singapore once again seemed to be about feedstock advantage. This included several charts ranking the competitiveness of the three major categories of ethylene producers – naphtha-based, ethane-based and coal-based – in low, medium and high future oil price scenarios. This has […]
The Chemicals Industry: The Ten Key Challenges
By John Richardson AS delegates gather for this year’s Asia Petrochemical Industry Conference (APIC) in Singapore, there are ten challenges that they need to address during their discussions over the next three days: AN Economic Supercycle, which made life very easy for the global petrochemicals business, is over for good because of the retirement […]
China Complexity: The Wrong And Right Kind Of Spending
China’s One Belt, One Road Initiative – the right kind of spending By John Richardson SOME people might too quickly assume that last week saw yet more evidence of the reformers and anti-reformers within the Chinese government pulling in different directions. This was seen to follow on from the Q1 2016 growth of […]
China’s PP Import Decline: Did you See This Coming?
By John Richardson THE smart people in the polypropylene (PP) business will have already adjusted their strategies in response to evidence, from 2009 onwards, that China was very aggressively expanding its PP capacities. They would have tracked the rapid rate of project approvals, whilst also ignoring claims that many of these projects would never be […]
US Water Crisis: Be Part Of The Solution, Not The Problem
By John Richardson IT SHOULD be pretty obvious to all of us that there is a huge gap in the provision of basic needs in the emerging world. Just look, for example, at the some 2.3bn people who in 2015 still lacked access to modern sanitation, according to the World Bank. The vast majority of […]
The Two Different Chinas: Outcome Remains Uncertain
By John Richardson THIS year’s “sugar high” was always going to be that exactly that – if you look at the right data. The staggering increase in China’s total credit in Q1 2016 over the first quarter of last year –by as much as 58% – was only ever going to deliver a mild, and unsustainable, […]
Go Where The Money Is: Sanitation And Water
By John Richardson HOW do you define global progress? Is it the number of extra people each year who are able to afford to buy a smartphone, or is it the number of additional people who are given access to modern sanitation? The thing is that ownership of smartphones will soon reach ceiling until or […]