By John Richardson CHINA’S imports of polypropylene (PP) look set to fall to some 4.4m tonnes in 2021 – a 33% reduction over last year’s imports of 6.6m tonnes. The China Customs department trade data for H1 2021 when annualised imply 4.7m tonnes of imports for the full year 2021. But as around 60% of […]
Asian Chemical Connections
Global HDPE demand prospects dim on a slower developing world and China
By John Richardson THE DRAG ON global polyolefins growth from declining demand in the developing world will, I think, be much greater than I thought would be the case in March this year, when I did my last round of forecasts for 2021-2025 consumption. The core of the problem is in my view low vaccination […]
Global PP demand growth being dragged lower by the developing world
By John Richardson IN NORMAL CIRCUMSTANCES the above chart – which shows our base case for global polypropylene (PP) demand in 2021 versus my downside for this year – would be extremely significant. If anything like the weaker growth I envisage for this year were to materialise, the whole world would be pushed into significant […]
The developing world must be at the centre of every climate discussion and initiative
By John Richardson THE LATEST Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report makes grim reading if you support the science-based argument, as I do, that we are causing very serious damage to our climate. We must, in my view, start with how we talk about the climate change challenge if we are to solve this […]
China panic over a downturn in H2 2021 is as overcooked the H1 boom narrative
By John Richardson THERE is a lot of very unhelpful noise out there about China which is making it very difficult for petrochemical producers and buyers to see the real picture. But the noise is of great benefit to petrochemical and financial traders as, of course, noise accompanied by volatility is how traders make their […]
Every climate initiative must be road tested in the developing world – and adequate funding is essential
The views expressed in this blog are, as always, my personal views and do not represent the views of ICIS. As always, also, they are here to be challenged with alternative views supported by the data. Thank you! By John Richardson EVERY SOLUTION to the biggest challenges our industry faces – which of course are […]
China polyolefins demand declines accelerate as supply chains remain the key challenge
By John Richardson ONE OF THE golden rules that has nearly always applied over the last 20 years is that you never bet against the Chinese economy. Time and again, the doom mongers have been proved embarrassingly wrong. But we now have enough data and anecdotal evidence from 2021 to conclude that the deceleration in […]
Pandemic’s third wave seems unlikely to damage global petrochemicals demand
By John Richardson THE GREATEST rock band of all time put it so well in Circumstances from the seminal 1978 album, Hemispheres. The apposite line in the Rush song in relation to this week’s petrochemicals markets is “plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose” (translated from French, “the more things change, the more they […]
The right analysis of China export data confirms moderate slowdown
By John Richardson STATISTICS, if you do not look at them in the right way, can be very misleading. This is the case with last week’s excitement about the growth in China’s June exports of manufactured goods. On a year-on-year basis, exports grew in dollar terms by 32.2% in June from a year earlier compared […]
Southeast polyolefins demand growth could be negative again in 2021
By John Richardson BEFORE the pandemic, GDP growth rates in the developing world were always higher than in developed economies. And because developing economies had much lower levels of petrochemicals consumption than their rich counterparts, it meant that the multiples over GDP were higher than in the rich word, where consumption was pretty much saturated. […]