European chemical industry 2030

To prepare for the future, chemical enterprises all over the world are seizing the time to formulate the regional positioning strategy in 2030. Getting an accurate assessment of each region's market attractiveness and current footprint size is a good start.

The current competitive environment shows that European companies are in a favorable position in the domestic market, but in a weak position in the overseas market. Therefore, there are huge opportunities in overseas markets.

The overall attraction of a specific regional market is determined by its scale and growth capacity, price level and operation convenience. A more qualitative general positioning is defined by market share, customer access and profitability.

The core and largest market for European players is Europe. Because of the slow growth prospects, Europe is a disciplined market for competitors. In terms of market attractiveness, European producers are most interested in China's potential and growth rate. China is already very competitive, and the Chinese government is not shy of exercising power, even in the face of multinational companies.

Looking down, as a large homogeneous market with fair competition, NAFTA countries are still quite attractive; however, like Europe, growth is slow. The rest of Asia (ROA) is a relatively decentralized and competitive market, which is slightly less attractive than NAFTA. However, similar to China, ROA is still interesting because it has some of the largest and fastest growing economies, including India, South Korea, Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia and Vietnam. Finally, Latin America, Japan and the rest of the world (row) are at the bottom of the list of European producers. These markets do not have the scale or growth potential of other markets.

The growing demand for key chemicals such as pulp and construction in Asia will be driven by continuous growth.

In terms of market position, European enterprises obviously enjoy home advantage, but their position outside Europe is not strong and their market share is limited. Improving profitability is still the biggest challenge for enterprises operating in China, and there are still problems in integrating Japanese networks. In ROA, foreign investors face a very fragmented market, local competition is often supported by the government, and local demand may not justify investing in assets of global scale. In Latin America, European companies can use their strong competitive position to increase their market share. Finally, NAFTA members offer the potential to increase profit margins and capture more market share.