Top Asian chemical producers witnessed sluggish sales in 2012, with companies continuing to face challenges in 2013 due to slow growth of Chinese market
Allison Oesterle
October 4, 2013 (ICIS Chemical Business (CBNB Abstracts)) – The top Asian chemical producers experienced sluggish sales in 2012. The companies continue to experience hard challenges this 2013 due to the slow growth of the Chinese market. The Chinese state-owned petrochemical firm Sinopec has retained its position as the leader in Asia and second worldwide. However, its sales decreased by 2%, and operating profit was at $58.9 M, a big decrease from $4.0 bn of 2011. Because of a stagnant Chinese market, the company was forced to decrease the production of ethylene by 4.5% (9.45 M tonnes) and synthetic resins by 2.3% (13.34 M tonnes). Synthetic fibre production was also decreased by 3.5% (1.33 M tonnes). Meanwhile, LG Chem was able to record a 2.6% increase in sales, enabling itto capture the 13th global spot, up from 15th in 2011. The company also exceeded Sumimoto Chemical's 2012 performance, the latter seeing its US dollar sales suffer due to a weak Yen. A table shows the 2012 financial performance of the top 10 Asian chemical producers. Sinopec stayed at No 1 with $64,894 M recorded sales, followed by Mitsubishi Chemical with $32,782 M, and LG Chem with $21,837 M. Original Source: ICIS Chemical Business, http://www.icis.com/, Copyright Reed Business Information Limited 2013.
* All content is copyrighted by Industry Intelligence, or the original respective author or source. You may not recirculate, redistrubte or publish the analysis and presentation included in the service without Industry Intelligence's prior written consent. Please review our terms of use.