MOSCOW (MRC) -- Data collected and tabulated by the American Chemistry Council (ACC) show that global chemicals production fell by 0.4 percent in August, more than offsetting the 0.1 percent gain in July, said Americanchemistry.
During August, chemical production increased in Latin America and Africa and the Middle East. Production fell in other regions. Headline global production was up only 1.6 percent year-over-year (Y/Y) on a three-month moving average (3MMA) basis and stood at 118.0 percent of its average 2012 levels.
During August, global capacity rose by 0.2 percent and was up 3.6 percent Y/Y. As a result, capacity utilization in the global chemical industry fell 0.5 points to 82.5 percent. This is down from 84.1 percent last August and below the long-term (1987-2017) average of 86.4 percent.
Among chemical industry segments, August results were mixed, with consumer products, synthetic rubber, manufactured fibers and coatings showing gains. Considering year-earlier comparisons, growth was strongest in manufactured fibers, followed by synthetic rubber, other specialties, coatings and inorganic chemicals.
ACC’s Global CPRI measures the production volume of the chemical industry for 33 key nations, sub-regions, and regions, all aggregated to the world total. The index is comparable to the Federal Reserve Board (FRB) production indices and features a similar base year where 2012=100. This index is developed from government industrial production indices for chemicals from over 65 nations accounting for about 98 percent of the total global chemical industry. This data are the only timely source of market trends for the global chemical industry and are comparable to the US CPRI data, a timely source of U.S. regional chemical production.
As MRC informed earlier, Russia"s output of products from polymers rose in August by only 0.5% year on year. And this figure increased by 1.2% year on year in the first eight months of 2019. According to the Russian Federal State Statistics Service, August production of unreinforced and non-combined films was slightly over 110,000 tonnes, compared to 112,000 tonnes a month earlier. Output of films products grew in January-August 2019 by 8.5% year on year to 718,900 tonnes.
MRC