MOSCOW (MRC) -- Innovation, along with sustainability and ensuring supply security, is the key to the future of the cleaning chemicals and products sector, reported Chemweek with reference to speakers at a session at the American Cleaning Institute’s (ACI) 2021 virtual summit last week.
The panel discussion on the future of cleaning focused the massive change wrought in the industry by the COVID-19 pandemic, and how that change will be carried forward into the future.
Consumer behavior shifted during the pandemic, obviously, with consumers purchasing cleaning products online and demand for many products, such as hand sanitizers and Clorox-branded sanitary wipes, skyrocketing. At the same time, demand for institutional and industrial cleaning products cratered. “There was much higher demand for home and household care, but the institutional and industrial (I&I) cleaning segment was hit hard by the pandemic,” Rui Zheng, head of marketing/home care and I&I at BASF said during the panel.
The pandemic wreaked havoc on supply chains, at least initially. “The first phase was panic buying, then there were shortages,” said Rachel Watson-Clark, director/research and development at The Clorox Company. “There were shortages of packaging, of raw materials, even of people.”
The shortages experienced during the pandemic speak to the ways in which cleaning products manufacturers, and their materials suppliers, will need to be mindful of supply chains even as the world reopens. “To maintain supply during COVID-19, we needed a higher level of agility and transparency, not just within our teams but with our customers,” Zheng said. “So we took steps to reduce complexity in this process, and heightened information-sharing and communication with and outside our organization.” The steps “will continue to be part of normal practice going forward,” she added.
That collaborative spirit will also be necessary to drive innovation, both Zheng and Watson-Clark said. COVID-19 created a renewed consumer emphasis on product efficacy, but sustainability remains a key, and growing, concern. “Sustainability is a…continued pillar for BASF,” Zheng said. “We think there will be a combination (of sustainability and efficacy).”
The critical challenge for innovation in the cleaning products space will lie in finding ways to enhance both sustainability and efficacy. “Innovation is all about…finding solutions that aren’t necessarily a compromise that takes everything down, but a synergy that brings everything up,” Watson-Clark said. “That’s what you are looking for. Finding solutions that are better across the board should be our goal as innovators.”
Other trends, such as increased consumer adoption of e-commerce, are also likely here to stay and will be innovation drivers. “There is strong collaboration across the value chain in industry for topics like compaction,” Zheng said. This could play into both e-commerce and sustainability, as compacted products are simpler to ship and require less plastic packaging.
Overall, the collaborative spirit that helped the cleaning products industry withstand the pandemic will help it meet the challenges of the future, including innovation around sustainability and changing consumer needs the panelists said. “Innovation is going to be key,” Watson-Clark said. ““Collaboration, creativity, and innovation is how we are going to figure all this out.”
As MRC informed earlier, BASF says its 420,000-metric ton/year steam cracker in Ludwigshafen, Germany is continuously running and has not caused any interruption of supply to its customers. Earlier, several media outlets reported that unscheduled flaring started on 13 January at the northern part of the Ludwigshafen site and was expected to last until 17 January and that an unspecified unit was shut, which "was not the case", as per the company's letter received by MRC.
Ethylene and propylene are feedstocks for producing polyethylene (PE) and polypropylene (PP).
According to MRC's DataScope report, PE imports to Russia decreased in January-November 2020 by 17% year on year and reached 569,900 tonnes. High density polyethylene (HDPE) accounted for the greatest reduction in imports. At the same time, PP imports into Russia increased by 21% year on year to about 202,000 tonnes in the first eleven months of 2020. Propylene homopolymer (homopolymer PP) accounted for the main increase in imports.
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