By John Richardson CHINA crunches exactly the same data as the rest of us, as I warned on Friday when discussing polyethylene (PE). China’s government is very aware of the dominant role China plays in global energy, petrochemicals and polymers markets. In many energy and petchems products, no other country or region comes close to being […]
Asian Chemical Connections
China Tariffs On US Petchem Feedstocks To Reshape Global Trade And Investment
By John Richardson CHINA’S planned tariffs against US petrochemical feedstock exports threaten a major upheaval of global trade flows in the feedstocks. The tariffs could also strengthen petrochemicals feedstock trading relationships between China and its fellow Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) country members. The Middle East may in particular step into the breach to supply […]
China Pollution Campaign: 2018 Chemicals Market Opportunities, Challenges
By John Richardson XI JINPING mentioned the environment no less than 89 times during his three-and-a-half hour opening speech during October’s 19th National Party Congress. China’s president did, however, refer to the economy 70 times during that same speech, but his whole emphasis was on the quality rather than quantity of growth. Evidence to support […]
China’s Pollution/Economic Campaign To Reshape Petchems
By John Richardson I BELIEVE that China’s environmental crackdown will continue to disrupt petrochemicals and polymers markets for the next few years. This is not a temporary phenomenon that will largely go away with the end of the September 2017-March 2018 campaign to minimise air pollution in 28 northern cities. Further waves of environmental inspections […]
China’s Polypropylene Market: The Right Questions You Simply Must Ask
By John Richardson On the surface, the above chart represents very good news for exporters of polypropylene (PP) to China. As you can see, our base case sees import volumes creeping up from around 3.9m tonnes in 2018 to 4.2m tonnes in 2025. But this chart should be merely a starting point for a much […]
China’s War On Air Pollution Causes Major Chemicals Shortages
By John Richardson CHINA is quite literally going to war against air pollution as tries to tackle a health crisis that causes some 1.6m deaths every year. The end-result is major shortages up and down many chemicals value chains. The environmental campaign is in lock-step with wider economic reforms. Economically inefficient low value manufacturers that […]
China Moves Towards Commodity Grade PE Self-Sufficiency By 2025
By John Richardson THE argument I’ve been making for a couple of years now is that the history of petrochemicals in China suggests a constant drive towards much greater self-sufficiency. No value chain is immune, I have kept contending. The recent history of a sharp rise in self-sufficiency in polyvinyl chloride (PVC), purified terephthalic acid […]
Propylene: How To Turn Oversupply To Your Advantage
The world has changed for good. Old ways of running petrochemicals businesses no longer work. Click here for details on an important new ICIS/International eChem study that will help you prosper in this radically different environment. And see below for a brief outline of one of the key themes that we shall explore in the […]
Spend Your Supply-Driven Profits On Managing Demand
By John Richardson IT has been a fantastic few months for Asia’s naphtha cracker industry as the above chart further illustrates. Even in the case of poor old, very heavily commoditised raffia-grade polypropylene (PP), variable cost margins so far this year for integrated naphtha-based players have averaged $389/tonne. The story is even better for low-density […]
The Emperor’s New Clothes: Time To Spot The Obvious
By John Richardson IF enough of the right kind of people say something enough times then everybody starts believing what they say, regardless of whether or not they have done the right kind of research. Part of this is down to a sense of insecurity – i.e. “why should I question what better-qualified people than […]
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