By John Richardson WHEN I WAS a boy in 1970s Britain, a new pair of shoes was an expensive proposition and so I had to make them last. Durable goods in general were costly relative to incomes, so many people rented televisions and had to save long and hard to buy new sofas. But then […]
Asian Chemical Connections
Iran may gain 48% of total China HDPE imports, 85% of LDPE imports by 2025 because of new deal
By John Richardson IRAN and China earlier this month signed a wide-ranging economic and security agreement that has been under negotiation for five years. The deal involves $400bn of investment in the overall Iranian economy with as much as $280bn of spending on oil, gas and petrochemicals. Before I crunch the data and demonstrate how […]
China early data points to 42% fall in 2021 HDPE imports
By John Richardson China’s high-density polyethylene (HDPE) imports in 2021 look as if they might collapse versus last year, according to the early data for this year (see the above chart). The same could apply to polypropylene (PP) and styrene monomer (SM) imports, as I discussed earlier this week. The potential 40% decline in HDPE […]
China early data point to PP imports collapsing by 78% this year with SM 67% lower
By John Richardson CHINA’S apparent demand for polyethylene, polypropylene (PP), styrene monomer (SM) and paraxylene fell during the first two months of this year versus November-December 2020. I have yet to crunch the data on the rest of the major products, but I suspect the trend will be the same. (This comparison is the only […]
China’s environmental policies: scenarios essential for impact on local and global petrochemicals
By John Richardson WE MUST develop very nuanced, broad ranging and constantly updated scenarios about what could happen in China over the next 20 years. Special scenario teams need to be set up by petrochemicals companies that focus only on China because the country will remain by far the most important petrochemicals market. China will […]
Worsening semiconductor shortages highlight need for new approach to demand
By John Richardson PETROCHEMICAL companies need to set up demand teams that focus on all the new short and long-term variables that have left us completely at sea on how to assess consumption. We need to almost start from scratch as regards demand management. Everything needs to be on the table for confidential and completely […]
China petrochemicals and the lack of logical basis for the 2021 boom theory
By John Richardson IF YOU DO a Google search, you will find a lot of articles on China’s economic recovery. Click on the links, spend some time reading them in detail, and you will discover a common narrative: China’s recovery remains on track this year. But you will not find the data that […]
Seeing through the lack of data: new scenarios for global LLDPE demand in 2021-2025
By John Richardson WE DON’T HAVE THE DATA sets nor the data tools to work out what is going to happen next with any acceptable degree of reliability. Until or unless we develop the necessary data sets and tools we will remain, in my view, all at sea about the direction of petrochemicals demand. The […]
China’s data gaps mean we must plan for multiple petchems demand, import outcomes
By John Richardson WE ARE STILL waiting for detailed data on China’s petrochemicals and polymers imports in January and February 2021. This is just one of many China data holes for January-February. We do know, however, that overall imports of plastics in primary form rose in volume by 8% in January-February 2021 versus the same […]
China’s critical 2021 “two sessions” highlight major economic challenges ahead
By John Richardson IT CONTINUES to surprise and disappoint me how every minutiae of the recent US petrochemicals outages have been pored over by analysts and yet relatively little attention is being paid to plant operations in China and the real, underlying nature of the country’s petrochemicals demand. This is despite China being far more […]