By John Richardson THERE is no other country or even region in the world that comes anywhere close to being as important to the global polymers industry as China, as the above chart reminds us. From end-2017 until the end of 2021 in seven of the major synthetic resins – PE, PP, PS, EPS, ABS, […]
Asian Chemical Connections
Acrylonitrile butadiene styrene trade war disruptions
By John Richardson BECAUSE CHINA is such a dominant player in finished goods manufacturing, US tariffs on Chinese imports as part of the trade war will have major negative effects upstream across a wide range of petrochemicals and polymers and across a wide range of countries. The reason is of course that petrochemicals are needed […]
US styrene another petchems sector at risk from trade war
By John Richardson THE US decision to pick a fight with China over trade and geopolitical influence could backfire very badly from the perspective of new US investments in petrochemicals capacity – most notably polyethylene (PE) and ethylene glycols (EG). The data tell is that many billions of dollars of investments in new plants will […]
US Import Tariff Decision: Impact On Polyethylene And The Global Economy
By John Richardson THE PROSPECT of a US-China trade war has edged closer as a result of President Trump’s announcement yesterday that the US will impose 25% import tariffs on steel and 10% import tariffs on aluminium. Countries hit hard by the tariffs will include China and Canada. We luckily avoided a trade war in […]
China Lending Bubble Adds 4.7m Tonnes To Polyethylene Consumption
By John Richardson THE IMF produced a very interesting study earlier this month, in which it estimated that if it had not been for China’s giant economic stimulus programme the country’s real GDP growth would have averaged only 5.3% per annum during the five years to 2016. Instead, however, the IMF estimates that China’s economy […]
China Growth Slows On Collapse In Shadow Bank Financing
By John Richardson YOU should print-off the above chart and stick it on your chemicals company boardroom wall. From fellow blogger Paul Hodges, it shows the collapse in credit issued via China’s shadow banking system. It is the shadow banking system that has driven China’s debt-t0-GDP ratio to as high as 650% – and could […]
China’s Polypropylene Market Reflects Wider Economic Problems
By John Richardson WHEN traders acquired big volumes of polypropylene (PP) cargoes to export to China at the end of last year for arrival in Q1, they were confident that the country’s domestic market would easily absorb just about every single pellet in every single container. Their confidence was based on the recovery in China’s […]
China Polyolefins: An Outlook For The Rest Of 2017
By John Richardson AS THE chart above shows, China is suffering from a bout a polyolefins indigestion right now as a result of a sharp rise in both imports and domestic production. This helps to explain the recent falls in pricing. This extra supply might have been very easily absorbed if markets had bounced back […]
China’s PP Import Decline: Did you See This Coming?
By John Richardson THE smart people in the polypropylene (PP) business will have already adjusted their strategies in response to evidence, from 2009 onwards, that China was very aggressively expanding its PP capacities. They would have tracked the rapid rate of project approvals, whilst also ignoring claims that many of these projects would never be […]
China Jan-Feb Polyethylene Imports Fall 22%
By John Richardson CHINA’S polyethylene (PE) imports declined again in February, and are down by an average of 22% over both January and February of this year compared with the same period in 2014. SOME people will tell you that this is nothing to be seriously worried about. They will argue that January-February 2014, imports reached […]
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