By John Richardson THE assumption that global free trade will continue to grow has successfully underpinned the strategy of petrochemicals producers for many years. Companies have been able to plan new capacities in just about any location secure in the knowledge that the future promised lower rather than higher trade barriers. But the world has changed. […]
Asian Chemical Connections
Machiavelli’s “New Order Of Things”: Risks and Rewards
By John Richardson IF you get it, you understand what is really happening out there, there is no guarantee that you will be successful as Machiavelli (see below right) – the great Italian Renaissance historian, politician, philosopher and writer etc. – so aptly described when he wrote: It ought to be remembered that there is […]
China’s Yuan: Making Sense Of All The Noise
By John Richardson LAST year nearly $1trn was moved out of China as rich people lost confidence in the direction of the economy. Much of this was moved if not illegally, then through stretching the rules to the very edge of snapping point. Take the practice of Smurfing as an example. The New York Times […]
Negative Interest Rates Will Not Work
By John Richardson WE are entering an almost surreal world where Western central bankers, rather than admit they are wrong, have either already opted for, are in the case of the Fed are openly discussing, negative lending rates. If the Fed and other central banks followed the examples of the likes of European Central Bank, […]
Deflation Threatens Asia’s Ethylene-Polyethylene Link
By John Richardson AS you can see from the above chart, ever since April 1997, when we first started providing price quotes for spot Northeast Asian (NEA) high-density polyethylene (HDPE) film grade, it has been spot ethylene rather than spot naphtha prices that have driven HDPE prices. You can find the same pattern for any […]
Asia’s Ageing Populations: Challenges And Opportunities
By John Richardson EVERYONE should know by now that China faces a demographic crisis that, unless addressed, guarantees much lower GDP growth for many years to come. This explains the urgency of economic reforms designed to escape the “middle income trap”. But here are some disturbing statistics from the Asian Development Bank about other countries in […]
China PP Exports Jump 38% On Jobs Drive
Polyolefins markets in Asia are not behaving in the way that they used to behave. For value-added analysis of these changes, and for price and margin forecasts for the region, contact john.richardson@icis.com for details of how to subscribe to our Asian Polypropylene and Asian Polyethylene forecast reports. By John Richardson NOT everything in […]
Too Good To Last for Asian Petchems? Yes
By John Richardson IT has been a fantastic few months for the integrated Asian polyethylene (PE) producers as the above chart illustrates. You can see that the average price for naphtha was $533/tonne CFR Japan in April. This compared with an average high-density PE (HDPE) price of $1,271/tonne CFR Northeast Asia and an average low-density […]
Ageing Populations And Fitting Two Billion Into One Billion
By John Richardson THE above chart is of absolutely critical importance for anybody who is serious about estimating both the strength and nature of future global demand growth for chemicals. If you are not a serious analysts then, sure, ignore demographics and cling on to a few vacuous slogans such as the “rise of the […]
Policymakers Have Failed The World
By John Richardson WHEN the economic, social and political history of 2008-2014 ends up being written, there are two groups of people who are going to end up bearing a lot of the blame for the new global financial crisis. It is the people who run the Fed and those who ran China’s government until […]
Jump to page: