I worked for many years at a world-leading chemical company, ICI. But sadly, it lost its way as senior management began to focus more on financial metrics than market developments. In 2007, it disappeared. Today, other companies including the once-mighty ExxonMobil risk making similar mistakes: EM was the world’s most valuable company just 9 years ago It […]
Chemicals and the Economy
Plastics producers face a ‘wake-up call’ from both ends of the value chain
Plastics producers have had a great run over the past 60 years, as demand took off for their products. But now globalisation is being replaced by sustainability. Sadly, therefore, they risk being left with an out-of-date business model, and falling revenues. Upstream, refinery closures are gathering pace as electric vehicle sales accelerate Downstream, brand owners […]
$60bn opportunity opens up for plastics industry as need to eliminate single-use packaging grows
150 businesses representing over 20% of the global plastic packaging market have now agreed to start building a circular economy for plastics with the Ellen MacArthur Foundation. As a first step, Coca-Cola has revealed that it produced 3MT of plastic packaging in 2017 – equivalent to 200k bottles/minute, around 20% of the 500bn PET bottles used every […]
Ethane price hikes, China tariffs, hit US PE producers as global market weakens
Sadly, my July forecast that US-China tariffs could lead to a global polyethylene price war seems to be coming true. As I have argued since March 2014 (US boom is a dangerous game), it was always going to be difficult for US producers to sell their vastly increased output. The expansions were of course delayed […]
Plastics demand is peaking as circular economy arrives
The Stone Age didn’t end because we ran out of stones. Similarly, coal is being left in the ground because we no longer need it any more. And the same is happening to oil, as Saudi Arabia recognised last year in its Vision 2030: “Within 20 years, we will be an economy that doesn’t depend mainly […]
Trump policies to impact global supply chains, US stock markets
Wall Street’s post-election rally suggests that many investors currently have the wrong idea about Donald Trump. They have decided he is a new Ronald Reagan, with policies that will deliver a major bull market. But those promoting this narrative have forgotten their history. Both men certainly share a link with the entertainment industry. But Reagan […]
The unseen costs of a Dow-DuPont merger
The unseen costs of the proposed Dow-DuPont merger are certain to be much larger than those we can currently describe. Both companies will effectively be more reactive to external developments, rather than pro-active, due to the internal focus that will be required to develop and implement the merger and divestment processes. This cost could well […]
5 questions for the Dow-DuPont merger
All the evidence suggests that most mergers fail to deliver the promised value. So those who propose them, especially when they involve such critical companies for the US and global economy as Dow Chemical and DuPont, must expect some hard questions to be asked. Here are my 5 top questions in logical order – Why?, […]
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 […]
BASF warns on outlook; Dow warns on China, ethylene cycle
BASF and Dow Chemical both warned on the outlook when presenting their H1 results last week: BASF CEO Kurt Bock warned, “We have for second quarter in the row in chemicals no growth worth mentioning . . . that is not a gratifying development. We have the impression that there is little growth dynamic at the moment and our customers remain extremely cautious […]
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