By John Richardson Sometimes a simple chart is worth hundreds of words. A lot less than hundreds of words today, therefore, as you consider the above chart and these two key questions: If the global economy was that strong, and/or petrochemicals industry fundamentals as sound as the consensus view holds, why has there been such […]
Asian Chemical Connections
China’s Pollution/Economic Campaign To Reshape Petchems
By John Richardson I BELIEVE that China’s environmental crackdown will continue to disrupt petrochemicals and polymers markets for the next few years. This is not a temporary phenomenon that will largely go away with the end of the September 2017-March 2018 campaign to minimise air pollution in 28 northern cities. Further waves of environmental inspections […]
China’s Polypropylene Market: The Right Questions You Simply Must Ask
By John Richardson On the surface, the above chart represents very good news for exporters of polypropylene (PP) to China. As you can see, our base case sees import volumes creeping up from around 3.9m tonnes in 2018 to 4.2m tonnes in 2025. But this chart should be merely a starting point for a much […]
China’s 19th Party Congress: Stronger President Xi Good For Petchems Growth
By John Richardson I SEE three Scenarios for Chinese economic growth, and so of course petrochemicals demand growth, in 2018-2025. See below where I detail how these three Scenarios would affect growth in demand for polypropylene (PP). But first of all, let’s deal with the issue of the 19th National Party Congress meeting, which begins […]
China Drives 58% Of Global PP Growth, So What’s Your Plan B?
By John Richardson THIS IS a great example of putting most of your eggs in one basket! Polypropylene (PP) shareholders are entitled to ask what Plan B is if China can no longer deliver as much as 58% of the total growth in global PP demand. This is what ICIS Consulting forecasts will be the […]
China Growth Slows On Collapse In Shadow Bank Financing
By John Richardson YOU should print-off the above chart and stick it on your chemicals company boardroom wall. From fellow blogger Paul Hodges, it shows the collapse in credit issued via China’s shadow banking system. It is the shadow banking system that has driven China’s debt-t0-GDP ratio to as high as 650% – and could […]
China PP Demand Surprises On The Upside, But Oil Threat Remains
By John Richardson CHINA’S PP market, provided oil prices don’t further collapse, seems to be pretty close to the end of a destocking cycle that stretches back to February of this year, when the post-Lunar New Year traditional surge in new import orders didn’t happen. The reason is a further fall in net imports (imports minus […]
China PP Market Underlines Return To Global Deflation
By John Richardson CHINA’S polypropylene (PP) net trade, which is imports minus exports, fell by 31% on a month-on-month basis in April to around 316,000 tonnes. That was to be expected given the 42% surge in net trade in Q1 2017 over the first quarter of last year. But if you look at the period from January […]
Southeast Asia: Confronting The Real Downside Potential
By John Richardson SOUTHEAST ASIA’S (SEA) economies can be divided into two main categories. These are the heavily export-exposed economies of Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam and Singapore and the two countries with the biggest internal demand drivers – Indonesia and the Philippines. Next come the smaller emerging SEA economies with tremendous longer-term potential, such as Myanmar […]
How To Grow Sales In A Deflationary World
By John Richardson CHINA hugely increased its propylene and derivatives capacity to the point where by 2011, it became the first region or country where downstream propylene consumption surpassed that of ethylene. This didn’t mean booming actual demand for propylene and what it is used to make. Instead, it meant that lots of “empty factories” […]
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