By John Richardson IF WE all had a dollar for every time we’d heard the phrase, “the growth of the Asian middle classes”, as just about the only justification by CEOs for petrochemicals and polymers investments, then the Principality of Monaco would by a very crowded place. There wouldn’t be enough room in the harbour […]
Asian Chemical Connections
Complacency, LLDPE and plastic waste: A collapse in demand
By John Richardson THE TECHNICAL people, those with PHDs in polymer science who have also spent years in application development work, will tell you it is simply impossible to find other materials that perform as well as LLDPE. Multi-layer LLDPE films are vital in applications such as wrapping food, they argue, thanks to excellent barrier properties. […]
Sustainability to stop petchems from dominating oil growth…..
….and oil consumption into petchems might even decline because of the plastics rubbish crisis By John Richardson DONALD RUMSFELD famously categorised the future into “known knowns, known unknowns and unknown unknowns”. A new study by the International Energy Agency (IEA) suggests that in the world as it is today – the “known knowns” – petrochemicals […]
Plastics Rubbish Crisis: How To Pick The Winning Polymer Producers
By John Richardson IT IS FIVE years from now. You are rich because you live in the developed world. It is first thing in the morning. You take your rubbish (or trash as the Americans say) into you backyard and place it in a series of bins where you separate not only recycled from non-recycled […]
All mixed up in the West
By Malini Hariharan The blog has been writing about the softening in olefin and polyolefin prices in the US. But the European market presents an interesting contrast offering arbitrage opportunities for those willing to take the risk. Operating rate reductions have been reported at crackers in Priolo, Italy; Tarragona, Spain; Carling, France; Cologne, Germany; and […]