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Asian Chemical Connections

Searching for balance

By John Richardson and Malini Hariharan Cautious optimism first gave way to mounting anxiety over the prospects for the second half of this year, but now the mood surrounding China’s polyolefins market is downright pessimistic. “It is going to take a few months to clear up polyolefin inventories and volumes from new plants,” Mazlan Razak, […]

Honam plans Titan expansion

By Malini Hariharan News is trickling in on Honam Petrochemical‘s plans for Titan Chemicals once it completes the acquisition at the end of the year. A source close to the company said that revamping of Titan’s two crackers have been evaluated including expansion of derivatives and building new downstream units at Titan’s Pasir Gudang complex […]

Propylene And the Law Of Unintended Consequences

Will this year’s K-Fair see some major announcements to take advantage of the relative fall in ethylene costs? Source of picture; http://www.k-online.de/   By John Richardson THE rise in the price of propylene relative to ethylene is exercising the minds of senior executives in the polypropylene (PP) industry. As fellow blogger Paul Hodges highlighted earlier […]

Aromatics May Suffer From Strong Reformer Economics

By John Richardson ASIAN aromatics producers are struggling from an oversupply driven both by weak demand for their products and strong overall reformer economics, the blog has been told. As this chart below illustrates for benzene, toluene and xylenes (BTX), the price declines for these base chemicals mirror those we have reported on extensively in […]

Hambrecht Reportedly Attacks China Business Climate

Jurgen Hambrecht Source of picture: www.wiwo.de/unternehmen-maerkte   By John Richardson BASF’S Jurgen Hambrecht has made highly critical and extremely high-profile comments about China’s business environment, according to the Financial Times. The CEO of the German chemicals giant is quoted as saying over the weekend – during a four-day visit to China by German chancellor, Angela […]

Honam Set For Further Buys After Titan Deal

The layout of the Pasir Gudang complex   Source of picture: Titan Chemicals   By John Richardson and Malini Hariharan HONAM Petrochemical’s plan to buy Malaysia’s Titan Chemicals  for $1.5bn – which was announced today – is likely to be followed by further buys, including a refiner, an industry observer has told the blog. “I am […]

Yansab results reflect Saudi gas problems

By Malini Hariharan Yansab posted a net profit Saudi Riyal (SR)502.4m ($134.0m) in the second quarter, its first full quarter of commercial operations. However, results could have been better if its plants had run at full capacity. Analysts at NCB Capital estimate that average utilization rate was below their expectation of 93% for the quarter. […]

China GDP Reduction Spells Tough H2 For Chems

  Source of picture: www.en.cn.national   By John Richardson THE decline in China’s GDP (gross domestic product) growth from 11.9% in Q1 to 10.3% in the first quarter is, no matter how you try to dress it up, bad news for the chemicals industry. Government officials and some economists are arguing that the moderation is […]

Crunch time for Asian polyolefins

By Malini Hariharan August could well be the time for some tough decisions by Asian polyethylene (PE) and polypropylene (PP) producers. Demand has languished for the last three months and although many are hoping for a recovery at the end of this month or in early August, there are as yet no signs of this. […]

India set to announce final ADD on PP

By Malini Hariharan India’s long-running investigation into dumping of polypropylene (PP) from Saudi Arabia, Singapore and Oman is inching to a close. Final anti-dumping duties (ADD) are expected to be announced soon, say industry sources. Affected producers have made their case but are unlikely to escape from ADD. Provisional duties, ranging from $44.40 to $1033.65/tonne, […]

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