| The Indian economy has provided the silver lining to the dark and seemingly endless cloud of the global economic crisis, which has seen the world slip into, arguably, the worst post-war recession. At a time, when the developed world posted negative economic growth, India and China, have kept alive the hopes for an early economic revival. Stock market trends (widely accepted as an early indicator of economic health), suggest an early return to the pre-crisis, over 8% GDP growth in India.
Notwithstanding economic revival, our industry faces several significant challenges in the coming years.
The first relates to a structural shift in petrochemicals demand. The economic crisis has caused the plastic consumption in the developed world to fall in 2009. Evidence suggests that a strong revival of this demand is unlikely due to aging populations, demand saturation and environmental pressures. Therefore, Asia will have to pick-up the mantle of providing growth in petrochemicals demand in the coming years.
Second, the increasing size of plants as a result of rapid technological advances and ability of the construction industry to handle larger equipment, implies that every new facility has a much greater impact on the markets and cycles. For eg. a world scale ethylene facility is today about 1.75 mmtpa up from 1 mmtpa only a few years ago. Third, prices and margins in petrochemicals have declined and so have the company bottom lines.
However, today, there is an opportunity for the petrochemical industry to restructure in the face of adversity. First, the structurally, the price sensitive Asian demand is likely to see strong growth in the coming years owing to lower prices. Second, lower energy prices have translated into lower costs for the petrochemical producers.
Third, economic recession and stock market collapse means that petrochemical capacities trade at much lower valuations today, is likely to result in vibrancy in M & A markets, with Asian players taking the lead.
Different strategies are being adopted by companies to remain competitive in this new and changing world, from innovation in project implementation, to redesign of operating strategies, innovation in feedstocks and new and innovative catalyst solutions. Therefore, petrochemical competitiveness in the face of the downturn is the principle theme of Indian Petrochem - 2009, the 11th international conference, which is jointly organised by Elite Conferences and CPMA (Chemicals & Petrochemicals Manufacturers' Association of India). We have invited eminent speakers to debate the strategic response of the petrochemical community to these changes, at this forum.
As in our previous conferences, this dedicated forum aims to bring together Indian and international petrochem fraternity and deliberate on the outlook and challenges facing the industry. Over these years, the conference has received your overwhelming support and has become an important meeting point for the industry. We are sure that this year too as in the previous events, we will receive your growing support.
We
warmly invite you to participate in this conference.
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