By John Richardson CHINA’S rising labour costs and a worsening regulatory environment had resulted in almost a quarter of European firms to consider relocating their activities elsewhere, said a survey by the EU Chamber of Commerce and Roland Berger Strategy Consultants. Twenty-two percent of 557 respondents said they may move investment to other developing economies, […]
Asian Chemical Connections
Global Economy Loses Suspension
By John Richardson ISN’T it interesting how when you talk to someone involved in a petrochemicals project, either publicly or privately, their project is very often sufficiently to the left of the cost curve to gain a winning advantage over competitors? Discussions are almost entirely about feedstock advantage, production and logistics efficiency and location etc. Thus was […]
China PE Demand Falls Six Percent
By John Richardson The 6% decline in apparent polyethylene (PE) demand in China from January to April this year, compared with the same periods in 2011 and 2010, underlines what market participants have been telling the blog for many months. The above chart also further emphasises how, in a weak market, the Middle East is […]
No Big China Relief
By John Richardson Wen Jiabao re-emphasised at the weekend that China’s economic policy would be tweaked rather than radically overhauled because inflation, despite declining further in April, remains a major threat. Anybody hoping for a stimulus package on the scale of that which was introduced in late 2008 is therefore likely to be disappointed. And […]
APIC: US Feedstock and Asia Optimism
By John Richardson FEEDSTOCK advantages in the US and the continued economic rise of Asia were some of the themes of last week’s Asia Petrochemical Industry Conference (APIC) in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Steam crackers are being planned in abundance in the US. As much as 7.65m tonne/year of new ethane-based ethylene capacity could be on-stream […]
China’s Inflation Challenge
By John Richardson In our third post on the context behind last week’s steep fall in polyolefins prices,and the prospects for a recovery, we look at inflation – one of China’s numerous economic challenges…..I NFLATION remains a major threat in China, hence the government is unable to make the cuts in interest rates necessary to […]
Asian Polyolefin Prices Tumble
By John Richardson Asian polyethylene (PE) prices slumped by $90-130/tonne last week on the eurozone crisis, the fall in oil prices and the imminent arrival in China of large volumes of Iranian material, according to ICIS pricing. A further factor dragging down the market was the start-up, expected by end-May, of Qapco’s low-density polyethylene (LDPE) […]
Canton Trade Fair Disappoints
By John Richardson THE total value of export orders at the latest Canton Trade Fair, which finished this weekend, declined by 4.8% compared with the previous event in October last year. This is the first decline in the value of orders at the bi-annual fair since May 2009, when the world was in the […]
France’s Difficult Future
By John Richardson Francois Hollande, who has the won the French presidential election, talks about cutting the retirement age to 60 from 62 for people who have worked for 41 years. This is a handy slogan for an election campaign. But European pension liabilities suggest that people should be working until they are older, rather […]
China PE Demand Down 4 Percent
By John Richardson CHEMICALS analysts, and some senior company executives, are telling us that growth in China will bounce back in the second half of 2012. To give these forecasts some historical context, the recovery was supposed to happen in January, then February, then March, then April and now at some point in the […]
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