Can credit trading drive dollars to plastics recovery?

Article | March 12, 2020

With Brexit officially underway, the UK has entered the transition period during which arrangements affecting the chemical industry will be made. The chemical sector produces around £50 billion worth of exports annually, and 60% of this goes directly to the European Union [1]. 75% of our chemical imports also come from the EU [1], making Brexit a critical time for the sector. The future of trading is yet to be established. Now is a pivotal period during which the chemical industry, stakeholders and the government need to work together to determine this future, in order to allow for a continuation of chemistry enabled growth.

Article | February 10, 2020

To feel or experience from a business engagement started with customer experience mainly in the consumer products business. Today it has extended to even knowledge industries like the chemical industry where experiencing or feeling can be leveraged to include all stake holders from customers primarily to employees to supply chain people & suppliers and all else. With digital technologies this has become easier than before. The benefits from promoting the ‘feel’ or ‘experience’ emotion could be multifarious for the chemical industry as described in this article.

Article | March 24, 2020

The Refining and petrochemical industries have a projection to keep growing in the next two decades and companies that are investing in new technology today will be ahead of your competition in about 2 years. The digitalization of the value chain, also known as value chain optimization, is a complex task. Part of this complexity comes from the diversity of challenges that occurs in different areas of the value chain within each operation, as we addressed in the article Understanding the Refining and Petrochemical Value Chains to Drive Optimization. Many companies still fail to obtain economic return from their investment in digitalization and we presented the most common challenges in the article Challenges of Achieving Value Chain Optimization in the Refining and Petrochemical Industries. With so many challenges, how can businesses ensure they have a strategic digital transformation program that will successfully result in the optimization of your value chain?

Article | April 8, 2020

The global COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in significant impact on chemical supply chains. Here we take a look at some of the chemicals that have been affected: Sanitization products such as Isopropyl Alcohol have experienced skyrocketing demand. Unfortunately, manufacturers are simultaneously dealing with problems that are preventing them from supplying at full capacity. While two US producers are experiencing production issues, another is having trouble with raw material Acetone supply. A fourth US producer is scheduled to restart production of IPA, but this material will take a few weeks to come online. Meeting this unprecedented demand is proving to be a challenge, and prices have increased sharply.