PIERS, the Standard in Trade Intelligence, provides a high-level view of top chemical commodities and markets based on aggregate trade data for U.S. chemical imports and exports. Learn what commodities are traded in high volume, what markets are growing for U.S. chemical exports, and identify trends in global chemical sourcing.
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PIERS Specialty Chemicals 2013 - Insights from Trade Data
1. SPECIALTY CHEMICALS 2013:
INSIGHTS FROM TRADE DATA
PRESENTED BY:
ALIET MARTINEZ
DIRECTOR OF CLIENT DEVELOPMENT
PIERS – JOC GROUP INC.
InformEx 2014
January 22, 2014
2. PIERS / THE JOURNAL OF COMMERCE HISTORY
In 1827, The Journal of Commerce paved the way in
trade intelligence by gathering and listing goods on
arriving vessels…
PIERS continued this ground breaking tradition in
the 1970s as the JOC’s‚ first venture in electronic
information services.
Today PIERS is the most comprehensive database of international trade activity
in the world‚ collecting and standardizing data from over 17 million bills of lading
annually for U.S. imports and exports.
3. ABOUT PIERS TRADE INTELLIGENCE
PIERS is the most comprehensive database of U.S. import and export
activity in the world. The detailed trade data that powers PIERS database
is sourced from bill of lading documents collected from U.S. Customs.
Every year PIERS processes more than
17,000,000 bills of lading. PIERS turns this
raw data into cleansed, standardized,
enhanced and validated data points which
provide the trusted intelligence that
companies use to make sound strategic
decisions.
4. OUR UNIQUE 6 STEP PROCESS
STRUCTURING
STANDARDIZING
VALIDATING
CODING
CALCULATING
ENHANCING
Our first step is to
structure data that
comes to us in a raw
format. As just a few
examples - we
untangle true
commodity names
from lengthy
descriptions, and
correctly determine
port names from
multiple report
fields.
Without
standardizing
commodity names,
ports and other
fields - a search may
miss many relevant
results. PIERS applies
a process to match
values and convert
them to standard
values - to ensure
that search results
are consistent.
With 35 years in the
industry, PIERS has
the knowledge to
detect errors and
cross-check
information for
inconsistency. We
apply hundreds of
proprietary rules to
ensure that nothing
is overlooked, and all
values check out.
By associating raw
values to industry
standards (ports and
HS codes, for
example), we enable
powerful content
integration and
enhancements.
PIERS offers a
number of
calculated fields that
are extremely
valuable to our
customers, many of
which are based on
proprietary
algorithms built
over 35 years.
PIERS partners with
a number of 3rd
party vendors to
enhance the trade
data we collect from
U.S. Bills of
Lading, providing our
customers with
valuable insight that
allows PIERS to turn
trade data into trade
intelligence.
5. DETAILED BILL OF LADING DATA
Available fields:
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Shipper name & address
Consignee name & address
Notify Party name & address
Country of Origin/Destination
U.S. & Foreign Ports
HS Code(s)
Standardized Commodity Description
Quantity & Unit of Measure
Weight in MTONs
TEUs
Estimated Value
Ocean Carrier
Date of Arrival/Departure
And More!
6. TOP MARKETS FOR U.S. CHEMICAL EXPORTS
Chemicals are defined as commodities filed under chapters 28 and 29 of the harmonized
tariff schedule for waterborne exports.
10. CHINA – TOP U.S. CHEMICAL EXPORT COMMODITIES
U.S. exports of Cyclic Hydrocarbons (primarily Xylene and Styrene)
to China grew by 50% from 2010 to 2012
14. JAPAN – TOP U.S. CHEMICAL EXPORT COMMODITIES
U.S. exports of Halogenated Derivatives of Hydrocarbon to Japan
(primarily Ethylene Dichloride) grew 80% from 2012 to 2013
15. TOP SOURCES FOR U.S. CHEMICAL IMPORTS
Chemicals are defined in this graph as commodities filed under chapters 28 and 29 of
the harmonized tariff schedule for waterborne imports.
17. TRINIDAD – TOP U.S. CHEMICAL IMPORT COMMODITIES
Two Commodities Shipped from Just 8 Producers
Top Producers of Ammonia
Top Producers of Methanol
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• Atlas Methanol
• Methanol Holding Trinidad
Caribbean Nitrogen Company
Nitrogen 2000 Unlimited
PCS Nitrogen Trinidad
Point Lisas Nitrogen
Trinidad Nitrogen
Yara
24. DATA VS. INTELLIGENCE
A spreadsheet with 50,000 rows may provide a lot of
valuable insights, but offers no actionable intelligence.
25. DATA VS. INTELLIGENCE
Our goal is to optimize the data to turn those insights…
Into “actionable intelligence”.
26. DATA VS. INTELLIGENCE
By marrying your industry knowledge with our
technical expertise, we can turn these insights into
decision-ready intelligence.
“ORDER” (the previously
unknown company) becomes:
Acme Silicates in India
The actual brand name
is extracted from a
lengthy commodity
description
27. TRADE INTELLIGENCE SOLUTIONS
Customized trade intelligence solutions provide immediate insight
into the shipment of goods based on your specific needs.
Drill down by:
• Commodity or
commodity groups
• Chemical grades, CAS
numbers, and brand
names
• Specific companies
• Geographical region
• Trade Route
28. ENHANCED DATA VISUALIZATION
Analyze relevant trade
activity by geographic
regions
Instant business intelligence such
as top 10 importers/exporters
View Volume Trends of
Major Competitors
30. Ready to Learn More?
Visit:
www.content.piers.com/chemicals
Start making smart data-driven decisions
with PIERS Trade Intelligence!
Editor's Notes
NOTE: Make the distinction that while Mexico is included as the top export market in this graph it is excluded from further analysis in the presentation because of the exclusion of cross-border data would grossly under estimate the actual volume of trade with Mexico. Not surprisingly Brazil is the largest market for US chemical exports. The Brazilian chemicals sector posted a $20.6 billion trade deficit in 2010, the second highest in the sector’s history and surpassed only by a $23.2 billion trade deficit in 2008. Despite its size and growing economy, Brazil’s chemical industry has few integrated chemical supply chains, in contrast to the highly diversified chemical industry in developed countries. The 3rd largest market for US chemicals is China with 7% of the US chemical export market. The Chinese chemical industry is the second-largest consumer of basic chemical products and accounts for almost 50 percent of the Asian total.
After Mexico, Brazil is the US’s largest export market for chemical commodities with anywhere from 800,000 to 1.2M MTONs of chemicals being shipped there on any given quarter.
With the exception of Caustic Soda which seems to follow a very seasonal cycle with upticks in imports from the US in Q4 of every year, Brazil’s top import commodities from the US seem to be following a relatively stable and flat trajectory that show modest year over year growth. On a year over year basis Carbonates are showing steady positive growth, with a 6% growth rate year-over-year in 2012, and in 2013 Carbonates are on pace to show growth well over 20% for the total year.
US chemical exports to China seem to follow a very seasonal cycle with a peak in Q4 of each year followed by sharp declines in Q1 of the following year. This may be in part due to the Chinese New Year in Q1 where most manufacturing facilities shut down for several weeks.
Cyclic Hydrocarbons have shown strong growth over the past few years, with 50% growth in US exports to China from 2010 to 2012, and 2013 so far has been a very strong year and on-pace to continue this upward trend. Growth in this commodity group seems to be driven by US exports of Xylene and Styrene. US exports of Ethers on the other hand, seem to be following a steady downward trend despite a slight uptick at the end of 2013 that seemed to have helped make gain back market share lost in 2012. Meanwhile Haolgenated Derivatives of Hydrocarbon, which is dominated by exports of ETHYLENE DICHLORIDE continues to ship in very erratic volumes to China.
Chemical exports to Belgium, which is a large player in the European chemical market seem to be growing slowly since the steep decline in the second half of 2011. Perhaps this is an indicative of the slow recovery out from the recent recession and the market uncertainty plaguing the EU.
It looks like the steep decline from the previous graph was the cause of this sharp drop off in exports of Saturated Acyclic Monocarbozylic Acids, whose primary export commodities are ACETIC ACID and VINYL ACETATE. The market for US chemical commodities outside of this large dip seems to be otherwise stable and flat across the major commodities.
As one might expect the mature developed economy of Japan, coupled with its reliance on imports for industrial input make it a very stable and reliable trading partner.
Exports of Halogenated Derivatives of Hydrocarbon to Japan, mainly ETHYLENE DICHLORIDE have shown strong growth of 80% from 2012 to 2013. Meanwhile exports of Ethers to Japan have been much more volatile, and the sharp dip in exports in Q3 2013 will likely lead to a sharp year over year decline for 2013.
Trinidad had the largest share of US chemical imports in 2013 with a 29% market share, largely due to the extremely high volume of ammonia and commodities that fall under the classification 2905 (acyclic alcohols) which includes methanol, butane, and propane among other things. China which followed in second with a 10% market share, had a much more diversified list of commodities imported by the US. Although Sodium Hydroxide or Caustic Soda was by far the commodity being imported in the highest volume. Last year the US imported over 357,000 MTONs of caustic soda from China.
US imports from Trinidad seem to follow a very flat and stable trajectory in very high volumes.
Despite impressive import volume that allowed Trinidad to top our list of top source markets for US chemical imports, the import market from Trinidad was dominated by just two commodities, Ammonia and Acyclic Alcohols (which was almost entirely methanol shipments). The discrepancy between the volume imported by the US of these two commodities and the next highest commodity by import volume was so pronounced that we couldn’t even include any other commodities in this chart because the volume paled in comparison. Another interesting point worth mentioning is that this large volume of shipments to the US came from only 8 producers that dominate the Trinidad chemical market.
US imports of chemicals from China have been steadily decline since 2007. From 2007 to 2012, total volume of US chemical imports from China have declined 21%, yet over the past 7 quarters total imports seemed to have leveled off.
Going back as far as 2007, US imports of Silicates from China have always been very volatile, so its not really a surprise especially when looking at the data on a quarterly basis to see this large spike in Q4 of 2011, followed by a steep drop in Q3 2013. Meanwhile, imports of caustic soda grew by 68% year over year in 2013 after falling nearly 62% a year earlier. Imports of sulfates and aluminum oxides remained flat. While Oxygen-function Amino-compounds (which is largely amino acids) grew 26.7% from 2011 to 2013.
NOTES: Explain graph mention spike in 2nd half of 2011.
Clearly the large spike in in import volume on the last slide was the result of the sharp increase in imports of Acyclic Hydrocarbons and Ketones (which was mostly BUTANONE) in the second half of 2011. Overall, caustic soda and Cyclic Hydrocarbons declined by 44% and 39% respectively from 2011 to 2013. While Saturated Acyclic Monocarbozylic Acids which was largely ACETIC ACID gained 76% over the same period.
NOTES: Explain graph
The US chemical import picture for Venezuela is very similar to that of Trinidad in that it’s dominated by the same chemical commodities Ammonia and Methanol and has very producers shipping these commodities to the US. Unlike Trinidad however, volumes from Venezuela are far lower for these commodities and as a result individual bulk shipments are most likely effecting the fluctuations shown in the graphs rather than actual market conditions, which on a year over basis are relatively stable and flat.