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GHS Becomes Mandatory in Australia on Jan. 1

GHS was introduced in Australia in January 2012 with a five-year transition period to give chemical manufacturers and importers enough time to implement the necessary changes, Nicholson wrote, adding that GHS applies to chemicals with physical hazards (e.g., flammable liquids), health hazards (e.g., carcinogens), and environmental hazards (e.g., aquatic toxicity).

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Engro Corp

Engro Corporation's portfolio consists of six businesses, which include fertilizers, foods, chemical storage & handling, trading, energy and petrochemicals.

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Chemical Management

Demographics are reshaping petrochemicals trade flows, investment patterns and demand

Article | July 8, 2022

TEN YEARS AGO, fellowblogger Paul Hodgesand Ifirst highlighted the leading rolethat changing demographics would play in reshaping petrochemicals supply and demand. We have been emphasising the importance of demographics ever since. Demographics have, of course, always been a critical shaper of economies throughout human history. But during the last 70 years, there have been such major changes in demographics that the study of demographics must be at the very heart of your company’s strategy. The Babyboomer generation in the West led to a surge in demand as the rapid increase in babies born in the 1950s and early 1960s joined the workforce from the 1970s onwards. This helps explain high levels of inflation during that decade because too much demand was chasing too little supply. Another driver of inflation was the Middle East embargos against oil exports to the West because of the West’s support for Israel. Then came the 1990s and first the integration of Eastern Europe into the global economy. This helped dampen inflationary pressures because of the plentiful supply of workers in the east willing to work for low wages in export-focused factories. This reduced the cost of finished goods in the West. Next came Deng Xiaoping’s critically important“southern tour”in the early 1990s and China’s gradual integration into the global economy. China increasingly leveraged its very youthful population to again make cheap goods to export to the West. Hundreds of millions of young people were willing to migrate from the countryside to China’s coastal cities to work in export-focused manufacturing plants. The world began to talk about the “China price” and how it was further depressing global inflation.

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Chemical Technology

Southeast polyolefins demand growth could be negative again in 2021

Article | August 2, 2022

BEFORE the pandemic, GDP growth rates in the developing world were always higher than in developed economies.And because developing economies had much lower levels of petrochemicals consumption than their rich counterparts, it meant that the multiples over GDP were higher than in the rich word, where consumption was pretty much saturated. For instance, polyethylene (PE) demand in a developed country such as Germany might have grown at 0.3% times GDP whereas in Indonesia the growth could have been one or more times higher than the rate of growth in GDP.But as The Economist wrote in this 11 July article: “In 2021 the poorest countries, which are desperately short of vaccines, are forecast to grow more slowly than rich countries for only the third time in 25 years.” Might the multiples over GDP growth also be adversely affected in the developing world, trending lower than the historic norms? They will almost certainly remain higher than the rich countries. But here is the thing: as millions more people are pushed back into extreme poverty by the pandemic or are denied the opportunity to achieve middle-income status, I believe that developing-world multiples may well decline.Escaping extreme poverty means being able to, say, afford a whole bottle of shampoo for the first time rather than a single-serve sachet, thereby raising per capita polymers consumption.

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Chemical Management

The supply-chain inflation threat to petrochemicals demand

Article | July 13, 2021

Petrochemicals themselves remain in short supply. This is partly because of reduced feedstock from refineries, a consequence of the pandemic-related collapse in transportation fuels demand.Global petrochemical supply is still edging back to something like normal following the US winter storms in February, during which most US capacity was shut down. A point of discussion is whether containers will become available in the right places at the right prices to relieve tightness in the European polyethylene (PE) market, once US supply has normalised. The container issue is making it difficult to move PE and polypropylene (PP) cargoes from Asia to Europe.Market intelligence from the US-based ICIS CDI team indicates that enough container freight space will be available to resume significant shipments of US PE to Europe, albeit at high prices. It will be several more weeks before domestic pipelines have been refilled, enabling US producers to refocus on exports, added CDI.

Read More
Chemical Technology

Survey Report: The State of Intelligent Operations in Oil and Gas

Article | June 11, 2021

Intelligent Operations can play a vital role in creating connected content environments, however, many companies – especially within oil and gas – having been slow on the uptake. Businesses that implement digital transformation initiatives often gain a competitive advantage over their rivals, as they benefit from reductions in human error, increases in productivity and further support for compliance efforts. This report, produced in collaboration with OpenText, dives into the results of our Intelligent Operations in Oil and Gas Survey 2020, revealing where the industry is in terms of its adoption of Intelligent Operations and the hurdles it needs to overcome to truly embrace digital platforms and solutions.

Read More
Chemical Management

The Future of Supply Chain Management for Chemical Companies

Article | July 8, 2022

TEN YEARS AGO, fellowblogger Paul Hodgesand Ifirst highlighted the leading rolethat changing demographics would play in reshaping petrochemicals supply and demand. We have been emphasising the importance of demographics ever since. Demographics have, of course, always been a critical shaper of economies throughout human history. But during the last 70 years, there have been such major changes in demographics that the study of demographics must be at the very heart of your company’s strategy. The Babyboomer generation in the West led to a surge in demand as the rapid increase in babies born in the 1950s and early 1960s joined the workforce from the 1970s onwards. This helps explain high levels of inflation during that decade because too much demand was chasing too little supply. Another driver of inflation was the Middle East embargos against oil exports to the West because of the West’s support for Israel. Then came the 1990s and first the integration of Eastern Europe into the global economy. This helped dampen inflationary pressures because of the plentiful supply of workers in the east willing to work for low wages in export-focused factories. This reduced the cost of finished goods in the West. Next came Deng Xiaoping’s critically important“southern tour”in the early 1990s and China’s gradual integration into the global economy. China increasingly leveraged its very youthful population to again make cheap goods to export to the West. Hundreds of millions of young people were willing to migrate from the countryside to China’s coastal cities to work in export-focused manufacturing plants. The world began to talk about the “China price” and how it was further depressing global inflation.

Read More
Chemical Technology

The Digital Transformation of the Chemical Industry: The Key Trends

Article | August 2, 2022

BEFORE the pandemic, GDP growth rates in the developing world were always higher than in developed economies.And because developing economies had much lower levels of petrochemicals consumption than their rich counterparts, it meant that the multiples over GDP were higher than in the rich word, where consumption was pretty much saturated. For instance, polyethylene (PE) demand in a developed country such as Germany might have grown at 0.3% times GDP whereas in Indonesia the growth could have been one or more times higher than the rate of growth in GDP.But as The Economist wrote in this 11 July article: “In 2021 the poorest countries, which are desperately short of vaccines, are forecast to grow more slowly than rich countries for only the third time in 25 years.” Might the multiples over GDP growth also be adversely affected in the developing world, trending lower than the historic norms? They will almost certainly remain higher than the rich countries. But here is the thing: as millions more people are pushed back into extreme poverty by the pandemic or are denied the opportunity to achieve middle-income status, I believe that developing-world multiples may well decline.Escaping extreme poverty means being able to, say, afford a whole bottle of shampoo for the first time rather than a single-serve sachet, thereby raising per capita polymers consumption.

Read More
Chemical Management

Southeast polyolefins demand growth could be negative again in 2021

Article | July 13, 2021

Petrochemicals themselves remain in short supply. This is partly because of reduced feedstock from refineries, a consequence of the pandemic-related collapse in transportation fuels demand.Global petrochemical supply is still edging back to something like normal following the US winter storms in February, during which most US capacity was shut down. A point of discussion is whether containers will become available in the right places at the right prices to relieve tightness in the European polyethylene (PE) market, once US supply has normalised. The container issue is making it difficult to move PE and polypropylene (PP) cargoes from Asia to Europe.Market intelligence from the US-based ICIS CDI team indicates that enough container freight space will be available to resume significant shipments of US PE to Europe, albeit at high prices. It will be several more weeks before domestic pipelines have been refilled, enabling US producers to refocus on exports, added CDI.

Read More
Chemical Technology

Survey Report: The State of Intelligent Operations in Oil and Gas

Article | June 11, 2021

Intelligent Operations can play a vital role in creating connected content environments, however, many companies – especially within oil and gas – having been slow on the uptake. Businesses that implement digital transformation initiatives often gain a competitive advantage over their rivals, as they benefit from reductions in human error, increases in productivity and further support for compliance efforts. This report, produced in collaboration with OpenText, dives into the results of our Intelligent Operations in Oil and Gas Survey 2020, revealing where the industry is in terms of its adoption of Intelligent Operations and the hurdles it needs to overcome to truly embrace digital platforms and solutions.

Read More
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Spotlight

Engro Corp

Engro Corporation's portfolio consists of six businesses, which include fertilizers, foods, chemical storage & handling, trading, energy and petrochemicals.

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US, Canada outline plans to align hazcom standards

Chemical Watch | March 11, 2020

Regulators from the US and Canada have laid out plans to coordinate efforts on workplace hazard communication standards as the two countries implement updates to the UN's Globally Harmonized System of classification and labelling of chemicals (GHS). According to the US-Canada Regulatory Cooperation Council (RCC) 2019-20 workplan, released this week, the council expects to roll out joint guidance on the implementation of GHS and interpreting requirements for safety data sheets (SDSs) and communicating product hazards across the two jurisdictions. Another primary goal, highlighted in the RCC workplan, is to have "one label and one SDS" that is acceptable in both countries. US and Canadian regulators also will continue to work together to push for a common position on the GHS at future UN meetings and plan to hold a stakeholder meeting this summer.

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Regulators from the US and Canada have laid out plans to coordinate efforts on workplace hazard communication standards as the two countries implement updates to the UN's Globally Harmonized System of classification and labelling of chemicals (GHS). According to the US-Canada Regulatory Cooperation Council (RCC) 2019-20 workplan, released this week, the council expects to roll out joint guidance on the implementation of GHS and interpreting requirements for safety data sheets (SDSs) and communicating product hazards across the two jurisdictions. Another primary goal, highlighted in the RCC workplan, is to have "one label and one SDS" that is acceptable in both countries. US and Canadian regulators also will continue to work together to push for a common position on the GHS at future UN meetings and plan to hold a stakeholder meeting this summer.

Read More

Protecting people from chemical hazards — another EPA failure in the making

TheHill | November 25, 2019

Most Americans assume that the chemicals in the consumer products we buy, such as that long list of unpronounceable ingredients in your bathroom cleaner or laundry detergent, have been tested and found safe for people and the environment. The truth is, not so much. And Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is missing an important opportunity to make those products safer. For decades, efforts to ensure chemical safety were stymied by an ineffective regulatory regime: the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) of 1976, which regulated household and industrial compounds, was widely regarded as toothless. During my 20-plus year career at EPA, I served as a senior manager in the agency’s toxics program from 1987 to 1989. The weakness of the original TSCA was a key factor in my decision to leave that position.

Read More

Tiny gels sop up intestinal toxins

phys.org | March 20, 2018

Bacterial infections that target the intestine can cause conditions that range from uncomfortable to deadly. While it's easy to blame the bacteria, it's actually the toxins the bacteria produce that trigger inflammation, diarrhea, fever and cramps. Treatment strategies typically include indiscriminate antibiotics that slaughter health-promoting gut bacteria along with disease-causing microbes. Researchers now report the development of a microgel scavenger that targets toxins instead of bacteria. The researchers will present their work today at the 255th National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society (ACS)."We want to develop a new therapy that is based on scavenging the toxins rather than killing both the good and bad bacteria," says Alexander Kuehne, Ph.D. "This way inflammation can be reduced while supporting the natural intestinal flora and holding the bad bacteria at bay."About three decades ago, Kuehne says, scientists developed a particle that used electronic charge to bind toxins in the intestine. It made it to the clinical testing stage, he says, but had too many non-specific targets for further development. This idea was the basis, though, for Kuehne's team's current project.

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