By John Richardson HAVE FEEDSTOCK will build has been the route to success for many years in the petrochemicals business. If you have never experienced anything else then a change in the paradigm is very hard to come to terms with. What often instead happens is that a new paradigm is simply rejected in favour […]
Asian Chemical Connections
China Auto Sales Slowdown Points To Lower Polypropylene Growth
By John Richardson AUTOMOBILES are, of course, a key end-use market for chemicals and polymers and China has been by far the most important global market in autos since the Global Financial Crisis (GFC). Chinese total vehicles sales soared from 6.3m in 2007 to 24.7m last year. Meanwhile, analysis from Paul Hodges shows that sales […]
Butadiene: Only The Supply Side Logic Adds Up
By John Richardson LOGICALLY, yes, if you look at the supply side only, there seems to be a strong case for on-purpose butadiene production. Here is why: US cracker operators have substantially lightened their existing cracker feedstock slate and, of course, all of the country’s new crackers that are due on-stream over the next 5-10 […]
China’s Evolving Autos Market: What It Means For PP
By John Richardson THE tide of credit that lifted all boats in China meant that chemicals company CEOs could get away with clichés such as “the rise of the middle classes” and “increasing urbanisation” and later point to strong sales figures as support for their arguments. But now the CEOs are going to have to […]
China’s Post-New Year Credit Squeeze
In the first of a series of special posts on how China’s lending environment is set to change, we focus on the murky world of shadow banking. We will return to shadow banking, and to other “grey” areas of financing, in later posts in order to assess what role they have played in chemicals and […]
China’s Auto Demand Growth: No Longer As Predictable
By John Richardson WE used to live in a linear world where GDP growth was nearly always on the increase and there was a very close linkage between the growth in any overall economy and the rise in demand for chemicals and polymers. It’s all about throwing darts at a metaphorical dart board, of course. […]
Much Less Of This…..
…….. Source: FT Beyondbrics By John Richardson A fascinating article by the academic Anil K Gupta and consultant Haiyan Wang offers further support to our long-running argument that the future will not necessarily be the same as the future, when it comes to China. The blog continues to be alarmed by the degree of […]
China Stockpiles Mount
Source: New York Times By John Richardson INVENTORIES of finished goods are mounting in factories across China as manufacturers continue to run hard, according to this New York Times article – perhaps in the hope that in 3-6 months time, everything will be alright again. “My supplier’s inventory is huge because he cannot cut […]
China Deflation
The second of our series of blog posts on China’s economic challenges over the next 12-18 months focuses on deflation. By John Richardson DEFLATION has now become a major concern for the Chinese economy following the release of official data earlier this week that showed a 2.1 percent decline in producer prices in June […]
China’s Luxury Goods Risk
By John Richardson THE “luxury end” of China’s polyethylene (PE) market is being heavily targeted by overseas producers and the results so far have been pretty spectacular, according to one of the producers. “The annual growth in demand for higher value grades has been tremendous – two times GDP,” said a senior executive with […]
Jump to page: