By John Richardson I SAID TO a contact earlier this week that it was remarkable that a senior executive at a petrochemicals company thought few, if any, conventionally built steam crackers would come online after 2030. His response was, “of course, that’s obvious”. But from the perspective of some other industry executives, the future is […]
Asian Chemical Connections
The US places heavy bets on LLDPE at a time of demand erosion
By John Richardson IT IS a remarkably single product-focused strategy given the exposure of linear-low density polyethylene (LLDPE) to demand erosion from the global plastics rubbish crisis. Looking across the three grades of PE, the US will end up with a 33% global share of net exports (exports minus imports) amongst the world’s net export […]
Polyethylene versus polypropylene: Expect the unexpected
By John Richardson IT IS supposed to be a tale of two polymers with these very different fortunes: Whereas our base case assumes that global polypropylene (PP) operating rates will average a healthy 89% in 2018-2025, we see polyethylene (PE) capacity utilisation at 83%. The higher the operating the stronger the profitability. The PP industry […]
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