Specialized chemicals market reacts abnormally due to epidemic 　

The coronavirus pandemic will cause short-term disruptions in the engineering plastics, linear alpha-olefins (LAOs), acrylonitrile and acrylates markets, some experts said at the IHS Markit World Petrochemicals Online Conference (WPC) 2020 Specialty Chemicals and Intermediates Forum.

At WPC, Brendan Dooley, director of global engineering plastics business at IHS Markit, said that in fact, the global engineering plastics market is quite balanced in supply and demand, but the new crown epidemic has caused a major impact, which will be mainly reflected in 2020 and early 2021

Dooley said that due to capacity construction in recent years, the polycarbonate (PC) market has been oversupplied, and there is no need to increase capacity in 15 years, but the global spread of the new crown epidemic has made the situation worse, and the polycarbonate operation rate is expected to remain at a low of 60%.

Adam Bland, executive director of IHS Markit's specialty chemicals division, said that due to the outbreak of the new crown epidemic, IHS Markit has lowered the annual growth rate of global linear alpha-olefin (LAO) consumption from 4.

Simon Garmston, executive director of IHS Markit's acrylonitrile business, said it was too early to quantify the impact of the new crown epidemic on the world acrylonitrile market in 2020, but demand is expected to return to growth in 2021

"Despite the ravages of Covid-19, all major capacity expansion projects are still active," said Gamston

Denis Poussin, director of IHS Markit, said the new crown epidemic may increase the risk of a runaway market reaction to correct the imbalance in the acrylates market caused by overcapacity in previous years