ICIS - chemical podcasts

SINGAPORE (ICIS) -- Asia's fatty alcohol mid-cuts prices may be near the ceiling as demand from Europe is expected to wane after October, given the looming EUDR or EU Deforestation Regulation which starts on 30 December 2024.

Meanwhile, east Asian and south Asian linear alkylbenzene (LAB) markets remained in the doldrums despite expectations of an improvement in September. The weak performance of the crude oil and upstream markets since July have weighed on sentiment and led to caution among buyers.

• Limited spot availability to lend support to the mid-cuts C12-14 prices near term
• Heavy fatty alcohol plant shutdown schedule in September-November in Asia
• LAB market could potentially improve on upstream revival
• Elevated mid-cut alcohols market could prompt switching to LAB

In this chemical podcast, ICIS editors Helen Yan and Clive Ong discuss recent market conditions with an outlook ahead in Asia.

September’s hoped-for post-summer revival has been a blowout for Europe’s polyethylene (PE) and polypropylene (PP) markets, and this upturning of what used to be a surefire seasonal trend is typical of 2024.

In this latest podcast, European PE and PP editors Vicky Ellis and Ben Lake take stock of the year so far and are joined by ICIS senior polymer analysts Lorenzo Meazza and Umberto Torresan to pick out key themes for the rest of 2024 and 2025.

They touch on the challenge of unpredictable events, changing demand trends, unplanned disruption, as well as the huge number of plants coming online around the world.

SINGAPORE (ICIS) — Asia propylene will continue to see new capacities coming from China in H2 2024, while its demand is also likely to improve as new derivative projects come up.
Margin challenges may continue to impact the market by altering propylene and its derivatives’ operations.
As China is the largest producer and consumer globally, dynamics in the country will impact the wider Asia propylene market. What will be the outlook for propylene in 2024?

In this podcast, analysts Joey Zhou and Seymour Chenxia discuss the trends and outlook for the Asia propylene market.

Recent prices skyrocketing in Asia styrene prices is because of unexpected outages at European plants and it is expected to pull up Asia benzene and downstream styrene prices in August.

The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) has published the August World Agricultural Supply and Demand Estimate (WASDE) report, which shows the latest outlook for increased corn and soybean production with corn being calculated at 15.1 billion bushels, up 47 million bushels from the July report, while soybeans are projected to be 4.6 billion bushels, up 154 million bushels.

Senior Editor Mark Milam talks to Sylvia Traganida about the report and the current trends in the US market.