By John Richardson DOW Chemical’s Andrew Liveris has changed his views on China as a result of an economic slowdown that seems to have taken many people by surprise. “China’s economy has continued to decelerate as European exports suffered,” said Liveris, as the company last week announced a 34 percent fall in profits year-on-year […]
Asian Chemical Connections
Dow Sees China Growth Acceleration
By John Richardson DOW Chemical CEO Andrew Liveris said in an earnings call, following the release of the company’s Q1 results: “China is stabilising and growth is likely to accelerate later this year as their government keeps shifting its policies to inspire and incentivise domestic growth.” An industry observer agreed, and added: “I’m still sticking […]
Petchems And The Non-Profit Motive
By John Richardson AS the US contemplates raising its ethylene capacity by up to 29 percent by 2017, we would be fascinated to know whether the companies involved in these proposed expansions, and the “cheer leader” chemical industry observers spurring them on, have ever considered a chart such as the one below: First […]
Conventional Thinking Revisited
By John Richardson CONVENTIONAL thinking is that when you have a strong feedstock advantage, you should go ahead and build more petrochemicals capacity on the assumption that growth will eventually be sufficient to absorb volumes. Hence, several more green-field crackers would be announced in the US based on low-cost ethane, butane and propane via shale […]
The Risks For US Petchems
By John Richardson THE US petrochemicals industry might be in danger of being lured into old thinking about the future direction of the global economy as a result of abundant shale gas. Despite the short-term markets gloom which we described yesterday, several industry executives and observers who we spoke to on the sidelines of […]
Middle East builds downstream
By Malini Hariharan After years of making money in basic petrochemicals the Middle East focus has firmly shifted to downstream chemicals, a topic that is being discussed in great detail at this year’s GPCA forum being held in Dubai on 13-15 December. As highlighted by the blog in previous posts a combination of factors including […]
Chem Q3 Results Show Flat Growth
By John Richardson CHEMICAL company third quarter financial results point to what has been apparent at ground level for some time now – a struggle to achieve volume growth over 2010. My colleague Nigel Davis, who edits in the Insight section of ICIS news, wrote in this article last week: “In the fourth quarter of 2011, […]
A Dramatic Difference In Mood
By John Richardson THE big difference in the mood at the ground level of certain parts of the petrochemicals industry compared with that of company board members and investors was thrown into further stark relief earlier this week. As we discussed on Tuesday, the big polyolefins sector of this industry continues to struggle in China. Growth […]
Place Your Bets – Who Is Right?
By John Richardson DOW Chemical CEO Andrew Liveris said in a 27 July conference call that China’s industrial economy was still doing very well. “They’re managing themselves down very nicely,” he added, pointing to official GDP growth numbers of 8-9%, which translate into chemicals and plastics growth of 12-13%. “We’re not seeing any issue here […]
Dow To Sell PP to Braskem
DOW Chemical is to sell its polypropylene (PP) business to Brazil’s Braskem for $340m, according to our colleagues at ICIS news. The blog is digging around for the implications for Dow in Asia. For the time being, however, here are some initial thoughts…. Included in the sales are two plants in the US and two […]
Jump to page: