By John Richardson THE European polyolefins industry is quite often viewed as an industry with limited growth opportunities. But provided companies take the right upstream and downstream approach, the growth opportunities are substantial. Success will hinge on how successful the industry is in dealing with the plastics rubbish crisis. This will be one the themes […]
Asian Chemical Connections
Plastic Rubbish Crisis: No More Business As Usual For Polymers
By John Richardson DO NOT underestimate the ability of public opinion to reshape markets. That’s my first warning to any polymers industry executive out there who thinks future success will come from a business as usual approach. Public anger at the environmental damage being caused by today’s approach to disposing of single-use plastics is going […]
China Polyethylene: Inland Growth And Internet Sales Versus Threat From Sustainability
By John Richardson THE ABOVE CHART uses the same approach I used in late February for my post on per capita polypropylene consumption in China. In this case, my focus is on polyethylene (PE): The latest available IMF data for per capita income levels by province and other administrative region in China is for 2016 […]
Plastic Rubbish Backlash Will Lead To New Polymer Manufacturing Processes…
….as sustainability replaces globalisation as the new industry value driver By John Richardson IT HAS always been illogical to claim that as Peak Oil Demand approaches this provides a great new opportunity for lots of cheap refinery feedstocks to meet booming polymers demand. Firstly, nobody knows what the decline in demand growth for oil will mean […]
Petchems Face Major Inventory Risk As Economic Confidence Builds
By John Richardson NOBODY knows how many tonnes of un-cracked naphtha are sitting in steam cracker storage tanks around the world compared with H1 of last year. Or how much plastic resin and rolls of plastic film are being held in storage by converters. Or how many car dashboards are in the warehouses of auto […]
How To Replace Billions Of Dollars Of Polymer Sales Lost To New Recycling Rules
By John Richardson THE EU’s requirement that all plastics packaging must be recyclable by 2030 will result in billions of dollars in lost sales across the 28 members of the EU. To give you an example, my preliminary guesstimate suggests that some €6bn of EU sales could be lost in LLDPE alone in the 12 […]
China’s Plastic Clean-Up Threatens Polymer Growth Assumptions
Last week saw the release of an EU Plastics Strategy which aims to make packaging plastics 100% recyclable in the EU by 2030. China is also moving in the same direction, as I discuss below – and this doesn’t just apply to its well-publicised ban on imported scrap plastic. Domestically-produced plastic waste is also being […]
Plastic Waste: The Billion Dollar Threat To The Global Polymers Business
By John Richardson THE global scale of the plastics waste challenge is illustrated by the above chart from my blog post last October. Using our ICIS Supply & Demand Database, examining the production of of 11 major polymers, some 4bn tonnes of plastic has ended up in the natural environment since 1978. Estimates like this […]