Plastics recycling is set to become a major new industry, based on the need to use renewable carbon. As the Nova Institute has shown, there is scope to expand production by 15x by 2050. And so if plastics companies don’t get to work now, new entrants will quickly emerge to replace them.
Chemicals and the Economy
Outlook for the global aromatics industry – insights from senior executives at Amsterdam Conference
Aromatics markets often lead petrochemical markets, and provide good insight into economic trends. This has certainly been true of PTA (terephthalic acid) and benzene over the past year. PTA demand into polyester and PET is dominated by Asia: benzene’s wide variety of uses means it is a good proxy for industrial production in Europe. Recent developments have been […]
Shell CEO says Europe needs to leverage chemicals clusters
There are 2 ways to improve operating rates in an industry. One is to increase volumes, the other is to reduce capacity. The latest APPE data covering H1 2014 for European olefin capacity highlights how the European petrochemical industry has successfully used both mechanisms over the past year to improve its position: Ethylene volume increased to 9.8MT, versus […]
Bayer and Shell to speak at Amsterdam Conference
We have another strong speaker line-up for our 10th European Aromatics & Derivatives conference on 22-23 November in Amsterdam, co-organised as usual with ICIS. Patrick Thomas, CEO of Bayer Material Science, will talk about the outlook from the viewpoint of a major global aromatics consumer. Alexander Farina, GM strategy for Shell Chemicals, will give his […]
Petchem markets become more complex
Our annual Asian conference in Singapore (co-organised as always with ICIS) was very interesting this week. We had some fascinating presentations from major companies including Reliance and Thai Oil, and China insights from CICCC and Chemease. Shell’s GM for strategy, Alexander Farina, discussed changes in cost competitiveness between benzene (grey column) and propylene (red) over […]
Aromatics face challenges ahead
Attendees had a fascinating two days at our annual European Aromatics & Derivatives Conference in Berlin this week. As always, it was co-organised with ICIS, and featured a strong list of speakers: Sven Royall, VP at Shell Chemicals, put forward an optimistic outlook for benzene derivatives. He argued that substitution of PS by PP had […]
Shell focuses on profitable upgrading of hydrocarbons
Business models have been changing over the past decade in the chemical industry, as illustrated in the above chart. Initially, the dotcom era began to put pressure on former ‘specialty businesses’, as customers discovered they were paying over the odds for technical support that was no longer required. The internet made it much easier to […]
Aromatics Conference ‘Early Bird’ discount till next week
Registrations are already building for our 9th European Aromatics and Derivatives Conference, to be held in Berlin on 23-24 November. Co-organised as always with ICIS, it features a strong line-up of industry speakers including: • Shell Chemicals, Sven Royall, VP Intermediates on ‘What next for Aromatics’? • Ralf Kuhlmann (former Business Director, ExxonMobil Chemicals and […]
Strong speaker line-up for European Aromatics conference
Our 9th European Aromatics and Derivatives Conference will be held in Berlin on 23-24 November. Co-organised as always with ICIS, it features a strong line-up of industry speakers including: • Shell Chemicals, Sven Royall, VP Intermediates on ‘What next for Aromatics’? • Ralf Kuhlmann (former Business Director, ExxonMobil Chemicals and APPE Chairman) on ‘European petrochemicals: […]
LyondellBasell to exit Chapter 11
LyondellBasell (LBI) is to exit from Chapter 11 bankruptcy on 30 April, 15 months after entering it in January 2009. The past 15 months have been an expensive lesson for those debt-holders who financed Basell’s purchase of Lyondell in July 2007, at the peak of the market. LBI entered Chapter 11 with $24bn of debt. […]
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