Because companies in all manufacturing and service sectors haven’t been adequately charged for the natural resources they use, and the damage they cause to the environment, we face the risks of catastrophic climate change and more plastic in the oceans than fish.
Asian Chemical Connections
China PE demand may fall by 5% this year with net imports 3.2m tonnes lower
ANY short-term recovery in China’s PE and PP markets will likely be driven by supply and not demand. Local supply could become tighter on refinery rate cuts. Refineries have reduced production because of weak gasoline and diesel demand.
China goes global in PP perhaps quicker than had been expected, badly disrupting the global industry
CHINA’S polypropylene (PP) industry is in the short- to medium- term is being pushed into going global perhaps quicker than it had intended. This is because of the collapse of local demand and the resulting all-time weak netbacks in China versus most of the other regions.
China’s PP demand growth: A bubble that may have burst beyond repair
WAS IT JUST an almightily big bubble that cannot now be re-inflated, even if Beijing follows through on its plans to inject $148bn in loans into the country’s troubled real -estate sector? Once confidence has gone, such an intangible thing, there is a risk it cannot be restored.
China petrochemicals spreads data: until or unless it recovers, growth will remain weak
IF THERE IS no return to the historic patterns of spreads between China’s petrochemicals prices and feedstock costs, there will be no economic recovery.
Europe’s gas crisis: the implications for global chemicals
GEOPOLITICS IS, I believe, just one aspect of a crisis facing the chemicals industry that is deeper and more complex than anything we have faced before.
Front mind right now in geopolitics is Ukraine-Russia and the gas-supply crisis facing Europe,
China’s latest LLDPE spread and demand data offer worrying clarity about the broader economy
THE LATEST DATA on linear low-density polyethylene (LLDPE) China CFR (cost & freight) pricing spreads over CFR Japan naphtha costs underlines the evidence from the other grades of polyolefins, that China is a long way from a full economic recovery.
China may this year become the Asia and Middle East third-biggest PP exporter, replacing Singapore. In 2020, China was nowhere in sight
AS RECENTLY AS 2020, China’s polypropylene (PP) exports totalled just 424,746 tonnes, causing what must have been barely a ripple of anxiety among the major Asian and Middle East exporters. But as the slide below shows, in 2021, China moved into the group of top exporters as its exports surged to 1.4m tonnes. This year, exports could be 1.7m tonnes or higher.
China naphtha-to-polyolefins spreads data still show recovery yet to happen
RECOVERY? WHAT RECOVERY? Some market players are talking about a rebound in the Chinese economy, and, therefore, polyolefins demand, but the critically important spreads data continue to tell a different story. Nothing has changed from last week.
European polypropylene: Supply chain demand destruction and the need for a new business model
EFFICIENT SUPPLY CHAINS were something that we used to take for granted. They hummed away in the background, making petrochemicals just one of many globalised industries where products and services flowed almost seamlessly across borders. We didn’t have to think about supply chains because they worked so well.