Sep 18 2010
Research and Markets has announced the addition of the "Spain Petrochemicals Report Q4 2010" report to their offering.
(http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/bb8bf1/spain_petrochemica)
The Spain Petrochemicals Report provides industry professionals and strategists, corporate analysts, petrochemical associations, government departments and regulatory bodies with independent forecasts and competitive intelligence on Spain's petrochemicals industry.
A weak domestic market and volatile export markets will prevent any strong return to growth in the Spanish petrochemicals industry until 2011 at the earliest, according to BMIs report.
The Spanish chemical industry association, Feique, confirmed BMIs previous forecasts of broadly flat chemicals output in 2010 compared with 2009, owing to lingering effects of the global and domestic economic and financial crises and fiscal austerity measures throughout the eurozone. Spanish chemicals output declined by nearly 11% in 2009 compared with 2008, while sales by the industry declined around 9% to EUR47.7bn. On the upside, the decline in the Spanish chemicals industry was far less than in other Spanish industries and fared better than many thought. But BMI shares Feiques belief that chemical industry sales will still be lower than 2006. With a very poor scenario ahead, BMI maintains its forecast overall chemicals output growth of just 0.5%, although domestic restocking and 3% growth in exports should ensure 2.0% growth in the polymers segment. Modest growth rates should be seen in the context of very low base effects, with the industry requiring substantially higher rates of growth to survive. As such, BMI expects some outdated and smaller plants to be taken offline permanently leading to shrinkage in available production capacity.
Much of the increase in output has been due to export demand, but fiscal austerity measures in much of the eurozone will remove this source of growth. Growth in output was spurred by restocking, bolstered by the end of idling at Spanish plants. For example, La Seda de Barcelona is ramping up PET production at El Prat de Llobregat, Spain following a lengthy shutdown. In April 2010, it restarted production at one PET production line at El Prat and brought its other line onstream in May, thereby increasing output to 14,000 tonnes per month in June, or 28% of La Sedas total PET capacity, at a utilization rate of about 95%.
Spain remains burdened with low levels of consumer confidence, contraction of credit and rising inflation, which are dampening domestic demand. Damage is likely to come from a proposed two percentage point hike in VAT rate, to 18%, from H210, further dampening consumer demand for consumer products during H210 and holding back a broad range of petrochemicals end products. The housing market is likely to remain depressed, thereby dampening PVC demand for a further year. We envisage very little pickup in volumes or value of mortgages so long as a massive overhang exists in the property market. The plastics market, particularly for engineering plastics in the PP segment, will be further hampered by the ending of car scrapping incentives in June 2010, although it is unclear how much positive impact that the measures have had on Spanish automotive production, which is normally highly export-oriented.
Key Topics Covered:
- Executive Summary
- SWOT Analysis
- Global Overview
- Global Oil Products Price Outlook
- European Overview
- Spain Market Overview
- Market Structure
- Petrochemicals Business Environment
- Industry Trends And Developments
- Industry Forecast Scenario
- Company Monitor
- Country Snapshot: Spain Demographic Data
- Glossary Of Terms
- BMI Methodology
Companies Mentioned:
- Cia Espaola de Petroleos SA (Cepsa)
- LyondellBasell
- Repsol YPF
- La Seda de Barcelona (LSB)