An ageing population and record annual levels of oil prices create massive headwinds for Europe’s petrochemical producers. One means demand growth is much reduced from the SuperCycle. The other means these lower volumes cost more to produce. What a pity, you might say, that the industry is not part of the financial sector. Then it […]
Chemicals and the Economy
Markets remain “volatile and challenging” says BASF chairman
Nothing has really changed over the past year. That seems to be the key conclusion from the blog’s quarterly summary of company results for Q1. A year ago, BASF noted that “achieving our earnings target is significantly more challenging today than we had expected”. This month, chairman Kurt Bock “warned the markets will remain volatile and […]
Ethylene prices have 96% correlation to oil prices
Companies are about to review their Q1 performance, and re-forecast profit and revenue for the rest of the year. Most will be disappointed with results so far, as the long-promised economic recovery has again failed to appear. This will be no surprise to blog readers. But there is another and connected issue for Management Teams to worry […]
China focuses on domestic PE production, ME/SEA imports
China’s growth has been the main support for the global economy since the Crisis began in Q4 2008. The slide above captures the extent of this in polyethylene (PE), one of the world’s largest chemical markets, based on data from China’s chemical association and Global Trade Information Services: The total market grew 11% in the 3 […]
Q4 results show companies still waiting for something to turn up
We all live in hope. That seems to be the underlying message from the blog’s quarterly survey of company results. Nothing has changed since last quarter or indeed Q2, when BASF noted that “achieving our earnings target is significantly more challenging today than we had expected”. Yet this latest quarter was, of course, supposed to be […]
2013 a bad year for force majeures
2013 wasn’t a good year for plant reliability. The blog’s 6-monthly survey of force majeure reports in ICIS news shows: There were 386 reports of force majeures in 2013 This was very similar to the 391 level seen in 2010 It also reverses the decline seen in 2012 after the record 495 reports in 2011 This is a worrying […]
US PVC exports fail to grow in 2013, despite shale gas boost
Trade data for net US PVC exports seems to be trying to tell us something very important about the current state of the global economy. As the chart shows, based on data from Global Trade Information Services: Net exports failed to grow in 2013 (red column) versus 2012 (black) and were only up 2% versus 2011 […]
A day in the life of an “activist” fund
A prominent “activist” fund in New York has told Dow Chemical to spin off its performance plastics, performance materials and feedstocks-and-energy units. The news led the blog to imagine a fictional scene in the offices of Activists-R-Us fund last Tuesday morning, as the news came through. Any resemblance to actual events is purely coincidental, as they say in movies. […]
The blog in 2013
The blog’s audience has continued to set new records in 2013. It is now well on the way to its 200,000th visit, and is read in 159 countries and 6110 cities as shown in the chart above. Readers also remain incredibly loyal, with around one in two readers visiting every week, and one in four readers visiting every day. […]
Demand now the key driver for future US petchem profitability
Will the US be able to sell all its planned new petchem volumes? That is the 3rd topic in the blog’s series about critical areas where we all think we know what’s happening, but may end up being surprised. We all know that the US now has a major feedstock advantage versus Europe, Asia and Latin America due […]
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