By John Richardson NOBODY knows how many tonnes of un-cracked naphtha are sitting in steam cracker storage tanks around the world compared with H1 of last year. Or how much plastic resin and rolls of plastic film are being held in storage by converters. Or how many car dashboards are in the warehouses of auto […]
Asian Chemical Connections
How To Replace Billions Of Dollars Of Polymer Sales Lost To New Recycling Rules
By John Richardson THE EU’s requirement that all plastics packaging must be recyclable by 2030 will result in billions of dollars in lost sales across the 28 members of the EU. To give you an example, my preliminary guesstimate suggests that some €6bn of EU sales could be lost in LLDPE alone in the 12 […]
In One Simple Chart: The Risk For Petchems From Crude
By John Richardson Sometimes a simple chart is worth hundreds of words. A lot less than hundreds of words today, therefore, as you consider the above chart and these two key questions: If the global economy was that strong, and/or petrochemicals industry fundamentals as sound as the consensus view holds, why has there been such […]
Asian Naphtha Cracker Spreads To Fall By 50% In 2018
By John Richardson ASIAN naphtha cracker operators will see a 50% decline in average spreads, or differentials, between their raw-material costs and finished product prices in 2018 compared with last year, according to my forecasts in the above chart. This will be the result of a further steep rise in oil prices and increased polyethylene […]
China’s Plastic Clean-Up Threatens Polymer Growth Assumptions
Last week saw the release of an EU Plastics Strategy which aims to make packaging plastics 100% recyclable in the EU by 2030. China is also moving in the same direction, as I discuss below – and this doesn’t just apply to its well-publicised ban on imported scrap plastic. Domestically-produced plastic waste is also being […]
Plastic Waste: The Billion Dollar Threat To The Global Polymers Business
By John Richardson THE global scale of the plastics waste challenge is illustrated by the above chart from my blog post last October. Using our ICIS Supply & Demand Database, examining the production of of 11 major polymers, some 4bn tonnes of plastic has ended up in the natural environment since 1978. Estimates like this […]
China Debt Crisis: Out Of Fashion, But Could Still Happen
By John Richardson NO LONGER is the promotion of local government officials in China being solely measured by their success in hitting GDP growth targets. What is instead taking priority is how successful local authorities are in cleaning-up the environment. That’s the carrot. The stick of China’s “carrot and stick” approach to dealing with pollution […]
Petchems Pricing Power, Operating Rates Tell Real Economic Story
By John Richardson PETROCHEMICALS and polymers pricing power – how easily petrochemicals producers can pass-on higher oil prices to their customers – is a great measure of the strength of the overall global economy. The reason is that petrochemicals are used to make a huge range of finished goods. In a booming economy, the pass-through […]
Struggling Polyethylene In 2018, Strong Profits Elsewhere
By John Richardson THERE will perhaps be two headline directions for the global chemicals and polymers industries in 2018: I believe that the global polyethylene (PE) market has a very good chance of moving from last year’s peak margins to levels of profitability below what is expected by most companies, investors and analysts. China’s ongoing […]
Asian Naphtha-PE Spreads Collapse By 80% As 2018 Challenges Build
By John Richardson ASIAN naphtha-to-polyethylene (PE) spreads collapsed by 80% in the first week of January compared with December last year because of the failure to pass on the rise in naphtha feedstock costs resulting from higher oil prices. In an update of the chart I’ve been running since late last year, what you see […]
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