By John Richardson SORRY to labour the point but this comes from a genuine concern for the readers of this blog, including many of our valued ICIS customers: the above chart, if you have been following the blog over the last six years, should come as no surprise. You may, as a result, already have […]
Asian Chemical Connections
Coronavirus, reshoring and the polyester industry: Good luck with that
By John Richardson POLITICIANS, not just including the Populist variety, are talking a lot about reshoring or bringing back home manufacturing supply chains in response to the coronavirus pandemic. This is partly because China’s shutdown of its manufacturing capacity in February and early March made legislators wake up to the world’s heavy reliance on China […]
Coronavirus may have made China province-level petchems data even more important
By John Richardson WHEN THE coronavirus crisis first hit China most of the focus was of course on Hubei province – the epicentre of the outbreak. One of the immediate effects was the collapse of petrochemical, automobile, steel, food processing and textiles production – the province’s biggest industries. Wind the clock forward to last week […]
Coronavirus: No recovery in petrochemicals likely until end-2020 and here are ten reasons why
By John Richardson HERE IS your print-out-and-keep 10-point guide, summarising the key themes I’ve covered over the last two weeks with important updates. I hope this helps your petrochemicals business in its planning process. Before we begin, I am afraid to say that we have probably lost a year’s worth of demand growth.Growth likely to […]
Coronavirus: China ethylene glycols demand could fall by 1.2m tonnes as imports also diminish
By John Richardson IN GEORGE ORWELL’S magnificent parody of communism, Animal Farm, he writes; “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others’”. So it goes in petrochemicals value chains. All the chains have been affected by the coronavirus outbreak. They all share the commonality of a big loss over at least […]
Global polyethylene demand in 2020 could fall by 3.3m tonnes, cost curve analysis turned on its head
By John Richardson NOTHING that’s happened over the last few days that should surprise anyone who has been following my blog over the last few years. What was obviously impossible to forecast was the timing and nature of the catalyst. As I wrote on Monday: This crisis has been a long time coming. The build-up […]
Global polyethylene demand in 2020 at risk of 2.4m decline because of coronavirus
By John Richardson I AM a bit confused this morning following some excitement about the Chinese decision to allow polyethylene (PE) importers to apply for exemptions from the 25% additional tariffs on US high-density (HDPE) and linear-low density PE (LLDPE) that have been in place since August 2018. One of my contacts for instance sent […]
China 2020 polyethylene demand 4.1m tonnes lower on single-use plastics ban and coronavirus
By John Richardson CHINA was supposed to be the one polyethylene (PE) market we could all depend on during a period of unprecedented oversupply. This is no longer the case. As I discussed last week, 2019 could well have been another stellar year for the country’s demand growth with consumption of PE at some 33.9m […]
China’s bans on single-use plastics: The impact on polyethylene demand
By John Richardson DON’T SAY I didn’t tell you. It has always been just a question of time before China took its plastic rubbish crisis very seriously, as I argued in an April 2019 blog post: It seems clear that plastics rubbish will become a major focus of the Chinese government, affecting all […]
Why the trade deal is much ado about almost nothing
These are, as always, my personal views and do not express the views of ICIS. Thanks By John Richardson RELATIONSHIPS between the US and China reached a major low point in May 2018 when details of the full scale of US demands were leaked to the Chinese. They required China to abandon its economic growth […]
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