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The Price Of Oil: Another Huge Historical Shift
By John Richardson FIRST came the collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989 followed by the reunification of Germany and the integration of Eastern Europe in general into the Western way of running the...
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How To Solve Deflation: People Need To Retire Later
By John Richardson AN economic theory is only of any use if it actually works in practice and if it becomes obvious it doesn’t work what is the first thing you should do? Well, of course, the answer...
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The West Is Becoming “Cash Poor And Time Rich”
By John Richardson Consumers in the West are moving from being ‘cash rich and time poor” to being “cash poor and time rich”. The reason is that Western fertility rates have below replacement level (2.1...
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Asia’s Ageing Populations: Challenges And Opportunities
By John Richardson EVERYONE should know by now that China faces a demographic crisis that, unless addressed, guarantees much lower GDP growth for many years to come. This explains the urgency of...
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Climate Change: Taking Out An Insurance Policy
By John Richardson WOULD you get on board a plane without taking out travel insurance to protect your family? Of course not, even though the chances of you being involved in a plane crash are one in 9...
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Here Is Another “One Billion Consumers”: The Over 55s
By John Richardson FOR too many years people have shuffled from one board meeting to the next, and one conference to the next, in order to talk meaninglessly about “the rise of China’s middle classes”...
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China Chemicals Exports Surge As Everything Changes
By John Richardson IN the good old days everybody could very easily export just about all their surplus chemicals and polymers volumes to China for two very obvious reasons. Firstly, even real GDP...
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China’s Courage And Vision In Ending One-Child Policy
By John Richardson CHINA’S decision to scrap its one-child policy will obviously not make any significant difference to labour shortages for at least the next 20 years or so as that is how long it...
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Cheap Oil Will Help You Sell A Million Tonnes Of Ethylene
By John Richardson TOMORROW’S winners will be those who recognise that oil, oil products such as gasoline and diesel and chemicals markets have changed for good. They will understand that this has...
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Saudi Arabia and Oil: A Lesson For Polypropylene
By John Richardson POLYPROPYLENE (PP) producers and their customers, the plastic converters, are on the cusp of a great opportunity. Let’s start with the producers. The potential for low-priced...
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Changing Demand Is Demanding Better Answers
By John Richardson I HAVE spent the last two weeks travelling in the Middle East, Southeast Asia and Northeast Asia and during that time, I didn’t meet one senior petrochemicals industry executive who...
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Deflation Threatens Asia’s Ethylene-Polyethylene Link
By John Richardson AS you can see from the above chart, ever since April 1997, when we first started providing price quotes for spot Northeast Asian (NEA) high-density polyethylene (HDPE) film grade,...
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Autos Material Science: 180 Degree Change For Petchems
By John Richardson HERE is an example of how the links between the petrochemicals and polymers business and the autos industry have long worked: In the 1980s, propylene was a very low value...
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Dow and DuPont Need To Prove Sceptics Wrong
By John Richardson UNLESS you live on Mars, you will have obviously read about the ground-breaking climate change deal reached in Paris over the weekend. Sure, it will only come into force if 55...
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The Opportunities For 2016 And Beyond Are Huge
A happy festive season and all the best for the New Year to my readers. What should chemicals companies do to be successful in 2016 and beyond. What follows will help. I am taking a break from...
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A Message To Davos: Why Populism Is On The Rise
By John Richardson POLITICAL populism, or perhaps more accurately demagoguery, is a major concern amongst the great and good who are gathered for this year’s World Economic Forum in Davos,...
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Japan Repeats Its Mistake. You Cannot Print Babies
By John Richardson WHEN you have built your reputation on a policy that has so far failed, you have essentially two options. You can either admit you were wrong and reverse course or double down on...
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The Risks Ahead For Polyethylene
By John Richardson TOO many people will look at the chart on the left and think, “Crisis? What crisis?” But glance to the right for what it is like in another petrochemicals value chain. What is...
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Negative Interest Rates Will Not Work
By John Richardson WE are entering an almost surreal world where Western central bankers, rather than admit they are wrong, have either already opted for, are in the case of the Fed are openly...
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China’s Yuan: Making Sense Of All The Noise
By John Richardson LAST year nearly $1trn was moved out of China as rich people lost confidence in the direction of the economy. Much of this was moved if not illegally, then through stretching the...
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