By John Richardson CHINA’s polyethylene (PE) demand growth was up just 4% in January-October of this year compared with the same period in 2010, as the chart above from Global Trade Information Services (GTIS) indicates. And yet in January, many of the people the blog spoke to were confidently predicting double-digit demand growth for 2012. […]
Asian Chemical Connections
Social Change And Growth
South Korea and its consumer-driven economy Source of picture: KeystoneUSA-ZUMA/Rex Features By John Richardson MEASURING demand growth cannot involve merely assuming that the future will be the same as the past, as this increasingly complex world continues to tell us. There are a myriad of social, political and environmental factors that will determine the […]
US Manufacturing Exam Question
A lot more than just the standard Model T.,,, Source of picture: cCSU Archv/Everett/Rex Features By John Richardson THE question on my exam paper this Monday morning is what this outstanding article by the author, Charles Fishman, in The Atlantic magazine, means for the petrochemical industry. We have all become used to the idea of the […]
China: 2013 Growth To Slow Again
By John Richardson A detailed study of some of China’s positive economic data for November adds a lot more weight to the point we made yesterday: The “recovery” is unlikely to last into 2013. November marked the first time in over a year that both the official China manufacturing PMI and the final HSBC/Markit Economics […]
China “Recovers”
By John Richardson ONE interpretation of the rise in the HSBC China Purchasing Managers Index to a 13-month high in November is that next year promises a strong recovery in the world’s most-important chemicals market. “People have taken considerable cheer from not only the HSBC report, but also other data points that might be interpreted […]
New IMF Report Warns On China Investment
By John Richardson CHINA’S over-dependence on investment as a driver of growth has been highlighted in a new International Monetary Fund (IMF) report. Investment accelerated between 2007 and 2011 to counter the effects of the global financial crisis, according to this Reuters report on the IMF study. “Depending on precise assumptions, over this period, China […]
New Business Mindset Needed
By John Richardson THE global chemicals industry became used to healthy and steady rates of demand growth during the “Great Moderation” in the West, before the 2008 crisis. As fellow blogger Paul Hodges wrote in January of this year: “Executives could usefully spend time debating whether ethylene growth rates might be 4.2%, or perhaps 4.5%, […]
Northeast Asian PE Margins At Record Low
By John Richardson THE above slide shows how bad the polyethylene (PE) market has been in 2012. Based on data from the ICIS pricing Asian PE Margin Report, it shows how Northeast Asian high-density (HDPE) integrated variable cost margins have fallen to their lowest level since 2000. This was supposed to be a good year, […]
Honestly, Nobody Still Has A Clue
By John Richardson JUST as the West was lucky, so was China. The Chinese economy was also buoyed by the Babyboomers, and by its 2001 admission to the World Trade Organisation that enabled it to greatly increase its role as the workshop of the world. This came at the cost of impoverished factory workers, environmental […]
Weak PE Margins Reflect Big Picture
By John Richardson BEFORE we look at last week’s political handover in China in more detail tomorrow, while on Friday we will return to our theme of Asian demographics, the above slide illustrates what the big picture has meant for the polyethylene (PE) industry. As you can see, variable-cost margins for Northeast Asian producers fell […]
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