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Hello and welcome to the ICIS Sustainably Speaking podcast.

I'm Sam Lovatt, Editor for the Recycled HDP and PP Markets at ICIS, and today I'm joined by Tom Rose, CEO of UK recycling technology company Reventas.

Reventas has developed and licenses its dissolution technology, which it says produces virgin-like recycled polymers and is scalable on a global level.

Tom, welcome to the podcast.

Hello and welcome to this October edition of the ICIS Oxo Alcohols and Derivatives podcast.

I'm Matthew Jolin-Beach, the Accrelate Estes editor, and I'm joined by my regular contributors and colleagues to this podcast, Cameron Birch, Glycol Ethers editor, and Marion Boetje, Oxo Alcohols and Butac editor.

It's been a busy period.

I actually had the first mentioning of destocking at the end of September, which is particularly quite early.

But in general, the market's quite sluggish certainly in terms of spot activity it's really relying on contracts and discussions for 2027 the initial forecast is for a very similar demand picture to this year costs going to be kind of dictating where prices go however the big I should say elephant in the room but the big talking point has obviously been the pre-disclosure of the anti-dumping duty measures for butyl at Crelate and 2EHA.

Check out ICIS Clarity for more information on that, but the predisclosure set out what are likely to be the provisional measures for those duties, and they ranged from, again, check out the table on ICIS Clarity, but from low 20s, 22.3% for Chinese producer, other Chinese materials in the 20s, into the 30, so 32.4 for Sasa and all other imports originating in South Africa, 39% for Dow and all other imports originating in the USA, and then 40.3 for all Saudi Arabian imports.

This is still being digested by a lot of players in the market, and there's a lot of discussions on working out exactly where could it land, what could it mean? What's it going to mean for imports? Will Chinese producers and people bring in material in from there and look to try and absorb that costs, even though prices out there are high at the moment? What does it mean for US and South African imports? And while there's no immediate Saudi material coming in due to the geopolitical situation out there, long term, does that potentially exclude that material from the European market? All of this is being discussed, plus also whether material could come in from other regions so could the global trade flows be changed could material come from Taiwan or Korea while it seems unlikely Japan's been mentioned as a potential route ultimately it's going to be costs what's financially viable and what's not that's what's being kind of worked out and assessed at the moment but it could will shape and change what people are likely to do for their 2027 contract make-ups and now we have an idea of where these are those discussions feel like they can really start in earnest now but um a lot of uncertainties a lot of unknowns um and these aren't the final measures they're they're due to come out in the middle of may next year but um it's it's certainly been an interesting one that's been a lot to digest um alongside the already quite challenging market as I said that kind of difficult marriage of high costs and low demand but yeah we will certainly see how it is and tune in for the next podcast and as I say check out Ice Ice Clarity for more information as it happens on the anti-dumping duty story and developments on the market all that's left to say now is thank you to you for listening thank you to Marion and Cameron for contributing and being part of this podcast as always um and yeah thank you

and

Hello and welcome to this ICIS podcast with me, Vicky Ellis, Senior Editor for Europe Polyethylene.

Now, this October saw thousands of plastics producers, machinery makers, distributors and more visit Friedrichshafen in Germany for the 30th edition of FACUMA, the International Trade Fair for Plastics Processing on the beautiful, misty shores of Lake Constance.

And joining them were a handful of some of ICIS's finest reporters and analysts.

So what we're doing today is we're going to speak about some of the key themes we picked up on in our many, many meetings.

And we're going to start off with a quick fire round where each of our editors and analysts share one phrase or word that sums up the market or the most surprising trend they observed.

So I'd like to understand how encouraged the industry should be by the outcome of this meeting and if safeguarding measures such as quotas, which have been agreed on electric vehicles imports from China, can also be applied to chemicals.

Welcome to Think Tank, the weekly ICIS podcast, which helps you make sense of chemicals.

I'm Will Beacham, and this week, I'm delighted to welcome back friend of the podcast, Paul Hodges, chairman of New Normal Consulting.

So Paul, just to bring the listeners up to date, after meeting counterparts in Beijing, The EU Trade Commissioner said back on the 9th of October that authorities in China have agreed to restrict hybrid auto exports to half or less than forecast by the EU over the next four years.

There has been a huge rise in auto imports from China.

And the same is true in chemicals.

Latest figures from the ICIS supply and demand database show a 35% increase in China chemical imports to the EU to 2.2 million tonnes from January to August this year compared to the same period in last year.

At the same time, high energy prices continue to plague the industry in Europe.

[upbeat music] Hello, welcome to a special edition of the ICIS Think Tank podcast, recorded in the park in Vienna during the EPCA Conference 2026 outside the InterContinental Hotel.

I'm here with the s- with, uh, my two regular panelists, Paul Hodges, chairman of The New Normal Consulting, and Tom Brown, our insight editor.

So gents, let's, let's just, first of all, sum up.

Agree with that, Tom?

Yeah.

I, I think that, uh, uh, I mean, I've been having a, a kind of informal straw poll of, um, other members of the ICIS team who are here, just from their conversations, and it seems like the way it's been discussed compared to last year is resigned.

Mm.

Or, um, or I gu- I guess you could or say fatalistic that...

So I'd like to understand more about what is driving the business of chemistry right now in Europe, the outlook for the future, what could be done to turn things around.

Welcome to Think Tank, the weekly ICIS podcast, which helps you make sense of chemical markets.

I'm Will Beacham, and this week I'm delighted to be joined by Rob Ingram, CEO of INEOS, Olyphins and Polymers Europe, and also President of Plastics Europe and Chairman of Petrochemicals Europe.

They're both trade associations.

So, Rob, welcome to the podcast.

I'd like to start by setting the scene for our listeners, some of whom might not be experts on what's going on in Europe.

According to ICIS estimates, since 2022, more than 25 million tonnes of chemicals capacity in Europe has been either closed or under review for shutdown or sale.

And that's around 9% of industry capacity.