Outlook 2030 outlines the emerging challenges, analyzes the current positioning, and emphasizes the need for the European chemical industry to position itself to stay ahead of the game.
Attracted by Asian economic growth and market opportunities, Europe's value chain is moving eastward, and the European chemical manufacturer is facing major challenges. A new environment with more fierce competition is taking shape, and state-owned enterprises and emerging chemical giants are emerging. Fragile economic conditions require management of volatility in a competitive environment where trade flows gradually change direction. Understanding what these challenges mean, and more importantly, determining the right strategic choice to thrive in this new competitive environment is the top priority of every chemical company’s executives.
Since the mid-1980s, the global chemical industry has grown at an annual rate of 7%, reaching 2.4 trillion euros in 2010. In the past 25 years, most of the growth has been driven by Asia. Today, Asia accounts for almost half of global chemical sales. If current trends continue, the global chemical market is expected to grow by an average of 3% in the next 20 years, mainly driven by major players in Asia and the Middle East. Asian players have home court advantage and are expected to occupy two-thirds of the market by 2030.
At the same time, economic growth in Europe is expected to remain moderately at 1%. In fact, we expect that by 2030, due to slow growth and increased productivity, the European chemical industry will lose more than 30% of jobs.
In the past 25 years, most of the growth has been driven by Asia. Today, Asia accounts for almost half of global chemical sales.
Taking into account the stability, slowness and linear development of the European chemical industry to a certain extent, the "ruler strategy" is likely to be applicable in the next 20 years. This strategy denies the emergence of disruptive market events and believes that the chemical industry will continue to follow recent trends to a large extent. This is because strong changes in the global economy dominate, long asset life, lack of major chemical revolutions, and continuous innovation in mature fields such as biotechnology and fuel cells. If the ruler's strategy is correct, by 2030, Asia's chemical production will exceed the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) countries and Europe.
The customer industry will continue to shift to Asia, ending the dominance of Western demand models, and creating a multi-polar competitive environment with diverse needs. The change in the direction of trade flows between the Middle East-Asia region and Europe will also contribute to the absolute dominance of Eastern countries.
Now is the time for participants to prepare-defend their own markets, develop a growth platform based on innovation and better value capture, participate more effectively in Asian growth markets, and build the skills and scale needed to compete.
Ruler's strategy
We expect that the ruler strategy will be implemented in the next 20 years. Evidence can be seen everywhere, from the shift of global economic power and chemistry's focus on basic needs, to the possibility of major chemical breakthroughs, the slow pace of innovation in Europe, and the limited number of life cycle transitions from now to 2030.
The main trend of the global economy is that Asia’s growth is driven by the ever-accelerating integration of global regional economies and societies. More than half of the world's population (labor and consumers)—nearly 4 billion people—live in Asia. In addition, more and more people from all over the world are entering big cities to accumulate wealth and consumption; Asia has the fastest urbanization rate, especially China.
The increase in consumer purchasing power will make people afford more chemicals, which will boost the demand for chemicals throughout Asia. Therefore, as the global economy shifts to the east, at least half of the world's top ten chemical companies will be Asian or Middle Eastern companies.
From a manufacturing perspective, the long-term existence of the chemical industry means that production capacity is unlikely to change suddenly. Chemicals are mainly used for basic needs such as construction, clothing and agriculture. Special products such as batteries and nanotechnology will greatly change specific value chains, but will not change the overall demand situation, because the total amount of these products is small compared with the overall increase in consumption in Asia.
In addition, the chemical product market will not be shaken by revolutionary discoveries (such as the emergence of new molecular species). On the contrary, with technological leaps in customer industries such as biotechnology and fuel cells, it is expected that progress will be made in specialty chemicals and applications.
Surfactant componentsIn relation to the cleansing enterprise, surfactants are the maximum versatile components used to create optimized cleansing formulations.
Surfactants lessen the surface tension between liquids and the interfacial anxiety between a liquid and a solid.
This reduction ends in a boom in spreading and wetting capability, giving a good deal higher cleaning outcomes.Surfactants are most generally used as wetting agents inside the form of soaps and detergents for cleaning oil and dirt from a floor, however are also utilized in insolubilizing, dispersing, and foaming programs.How Do Surfactant components paintings?Surfactants are amphiphilic, meaning they've each hydrophobicity (water-repelling) and hydrophilic (soluble in water) residences.
Surfactants also can lower the surface anxiety of agricultural remedies in order that nutrients may be greater conveniently absorbed by the plant.Anionic and Nonionic Surfactant additivesThere are quite a few specific surfactant additives that might be applied for numerous motives.
it can, however, purpose skin irritations.Nonionic surfactants, which include Aqua-Cleen®, don't have any charge and are frequently discovered in food, laundry, dishwasher detergents as well as in degreasers and plenty of difficult surfaces cleaning applications.
they are less probably to shape cleaning soap scum in tough water and typically do now not purpose skin irritations.In maximum instances, cleaning and frame contacting products use a mixture of each surfactant kinds to balance the cleaning capability whilst lowering the opportunity of skin troubles.
