By Malini Hariharan If sourcing PTA has been challenging this year, the bad news is that the situation is unlikely to improve for the next couple of years. Rapid polyester capacity expansion, especially in China and India, is already outpacing growth in PTA capacities and the situation is set to worsen. PTA producers, on the […]
Asian Chemical Connections
Chemicals And Polymer Prices Behave As We Predicted
By John Richardson AS the blog had anticipated would happen, there were sharp retreats in some chemicals and polymers pricing late last week on the steep declines in equity and crude prices. Polyethylene (PE) fell by $70-130/tonne, according to our colleagues at ICIS pricing, as the Dalian Commodity Exchange once again demonstrated that it has become […]
Oversupply In Petchems Still On The Way
Perhaps not just yet…. By John Richardson COULD it be that some chemicals industry players and observers, in the great galloping rush to join the supercycle stampede, have got ahead of themselves in predicting that we are already through the bottom of the margins trough? This distinct possibility was raised by Joe Duffy, consultant with […]
Petchem Pricing Faces Big Declines
By John Richardson THE wheels have started to come off the wagon – as we have been warning about over the past week or so – as a result of a broad sell-off in equities and commodities. Inflation concerns in China and elsewhere, the result of all the hot money flowing into emerging markets due to QE2, […]
Reliance Reveals Major Investment Plans
By Malini Hariharan India’s Reliance Industries is evaluating investments in a number of chemicals including olefins and derivatives, acetyls, elastomers and fibre intermediates to increase its petrochemicals production from crude, a senior company executive has told the blog. “We would like to maximise petrochemical production from our refineries, swing product slate from fuel […]
US Petrochemicals A World Beater
Shell’s refinery and petchems complex in Deer Park, Texas Source of picture http://www.msnbc.msn.com/ By John Richardson THE excellent third-quarter financial results of the likes of Dow Chemical and LyondellBasell further confirm the extraordinary turnaround in the cost positions of those with a big proportion of their global polyolefins production based in the US. Some […]
Iran Remains Optimistic On Exports
Dubai crucial for Iran By Malini Hariharan The blog recently had an opportunity to talk to a few Iranian companies and was impressed by their sanguine approach to the challenges posed by the new round of sanctions. This too shall pass was the prevailing philosophy. “We have a long experience [in dealing with sanctions]; […]
Facts, Fiction And Price-Rise Sustainability
Source of picture: tycoonreport.com By John Richardson This is a very dangerous time for petrochemicals producers as they attempt to separate real, sustainable demand from feedstock-cost related price rises and speculation. A bubble – as we discussed yesterday – seems to have formed in purified terephthalic (PTA) and, according to ICIS news, in […]
China fuels another price bubble
By Malini Hariharan Speculative fever has struck the Chinese purified terephthalic acid (PTA) market with domestic prices soaring by 26% in just one week. PTA futures trading on the Zhejiang Commodity Exchange (ZCE) was suspended for the whole day Tuesday, after values soared by more than 10% in just three days, writes my colleague Becky […]
LG Chem – Tried And Trusted Versus New Businesses
By John Richardson THE potential returns from LG Chem’s electric battery and electronic materials are tremendous and are leading to some bullish forecasts from analysts as to future earnings. What will be interesting, though, is what will be the main driver of profitability for the South Korean major over the next few years – […]