By John Richardson IT IS BEING suggested that China’s “common prosperity” policy pivot, the biggest event in the global economy since at least 2009, will lead to a slowdown in local petrochemicals capacity additions. Maybe. As we all know, our industry produces a lot of carbon emissions, and a key element of the policy pivot […]
Asian Chemical Connections
China traditional Q4 petchems demand increase unlikely because of economic rebalancing
By John Richardson A NEW RESEARCH PAPER by economists Kenneth Rogoff and Yuanchen Yang underlines the scale of what is at stake for petrochemicals demand if China doesn’t blink and sticks to its deleveraging of the real estate sector. The authors found that 29% of the Chinese economy is dependent on the property sector when […]
China carbon limits and Evergrande tied together as short term growth challenges build
By John Richardson Executive summary THE LIKELIHOOD that 227,000 tonnes of China’s polyethylene (PE) and polypropylene (PP) coal-based capacity is forecast to be lost to plant shutdowns in September and October this year looks at first glance to be good news for exporters to China. This would be much higher than the 43,000 tonnes of […]
Challenges facing China as it tries to bridge the rural-urban wealth divide
By John Richardson THIS COULD be the biggest event in our industry since at least the Global Financial Crisis, possibly even earlier. Do not make the mistake of underestimating the importance of China’s policy shift to “common prosperity” in your planning process. I’ve already covered some of the short-term potential implications in my posts on […]
What global petchems demand would have been like without the China property bubble warns us about the future
By John Richardson PLAYING “What if?” games by changing the course of history is popular amongst students of the subject, including myself. Imagine, therefore, in our world of petrochemicals, if China hadn’t decided in late 2008 to launch the world’s biggest-ever economic stimulus package to compensate for the Global Financial Crisis. Beijing felt it had […]
China PP demand could fall by 1m tonnes in 2021 but prospects for PE look better despite a weak January-May
By John Richardson THE ABOVE chart confirms that China’s economic slowdown, which began in January-February, continued into May. Remember that the only valid comparisons are between the first few months of this year and late 2020. If you conduct year-on-year comparisons then of course growth will look better because for several months during January-May 2020, […]
Global polyethylene demand boom likely, increasing the sustainability challenge
By John Richardson IT FEELS LIKE several lifetimes ago. If you recall, way back in November-December 2019 Asian variable cost integrated naphtha-based polyethylene (PE) margins turned negative because of the increase in US capacity. Then in January the following year, deep Asian and Middle East operating rate cuts returned some order to the market. Then, […]
The pandemic, climate change, plastic waste and the great divide: the world in 2025
By John Richardson NOBODY SHOULD be surprised that the developing world has fallen behind in the battle to reduce greenhouse gas emissions as the region is a long way from recovering from the pandemic. Evidence to this effect emerged last week in comments made by Fatih Birol, executive director of the International Energy Agency (IEA). […]
Inflation pressures build on prolonged supply chain disruptions
By John Richardson OK, I MAY have got this wrong. Inflation could be a bigger problem than I envisaged only three weeks ago. But if so, I would at least be in exalted company. A meeting of the US Federal Reserve concluded that generalised inflation was not a concern, and that “finished goods have not […]
China polyolefins: key signals to monitor on whether 2021 slowdown is reversing
By John Richardson IT REALLY IS EXTRAORDINARY how commentators continue to use year-on-year comparisons for the Chinese economy in H1 this year versus the first half of 2020. Demand was of course always going to be better in H2 2021, provided China maintained control over the pandemic, because the economy came to a virtual […]
Jump to page: