A happy festive season and all the best for the New Year to my readers. What should chemicals companies do to be successful in 2016 and beyond. What follows will help. I am taking a break from blogging, but will be back on 3 January. By John Richardson WHAT have we learnt from the last […]
Asian Chemical Connections
Autos Material Science: 180 Degree Change For Petchems
By John Richardson HERE is an example of how the links between the petrochemicals and polymers business and the autos industry have long worked: In the 1980s, propylene was a very low value co-product of naphtha and other liquids cracking. You always make around half a tonne of propylene for every one tonne of […]
Climate Change: Taking Out An Insurance Policy
By John Richardson WOULD you get on board a plane without taking out travel insurance to protect your family? Of course not, even though the chances of you being involved in a plane crash are one in 9 million. And would you step into an ocean where dangerous sharks swim, especially if you live where […]
European Petchems: Necessity is Again The Mother Of Invention
By John Richardson WHEN has a European cracker gone beyond its useful life? Forty or 50 years? Or maybe if you spend the right amount of money, it can last for a great deal longer. Devoting enough ingenuity and capital on boosting your cracker’s energy efficiency and feedstock flexibility can also secure the future of […]
US Needs A New Normal “Permanent Study Group”
By John Richardson A LOT of the discussions taking place in and around last week’s American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers International Petrochemical Conference (IPC) in San Antonio, Texas, was, of course, around oil prices. Lower crude prices means less of a production cost advantage for the US petrochemicals industry, which is predominantly based on natural […]
Following In The Footsteps Of China Is Impossible
By John Richardson THE chart above shows how China’s consumption of polypropylene (PP) rose from 4.6 million tonnes in 2000 to 19 million tonnes in 2014. It also illustrates how, in the process, China’s percentage share of global PP consumption jumped from 15% in 2000 to 32% in 2014. Meanwhile, imports also rose during the […]
Europe: Three Very Easy Predictions For 2015
By John Richardson HERE are some alarming facts about Europe: If you include all the people who have become disheartened and so have dropped out of the labour force, the Spanish employment rate fell from 66% in 2007 to just 56% in 2014. In Greece, employment has fallen to below 50% since 2007. “Chancellor Angela […]
The New Global Financial Crisis: Emerging Market Bonds
By John Richardson EXACTLY how the new global financial crisis will gather momentum is becoming clearer by the day. Greatly adding to this clarity was the latest Bank for International Settlements (BIS) quarterly report, which was released earlier this week. The BIS warned that: Off-shore lending in US dollars had soared to $9 trillion, and, […]
China: Half Of All Loans Collateralised By Land, Real Estate
By John Richardson BEN Bernanke, who as at that time chairman of the Fed, warned in July 2007 that the cost of the US sub-prime crisis would amount to $100bn. To be honest, we struggled to find a final estimate for the final total cost of the crisis, but these words from Wikipedia give just […]
China Commodities Fraud: The Global Implications
By John Richardson An eerie calm has descended over financial and commodity markets with volatility at a record low. The calm is eerie because it reminds us of the build-up to September 2008. Back then, not one single mainstream economist saw the sub-prime-led collapse coming and at the moment, the same feels as if it […]
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