Chemical industry competition

Finally, operational excellence made the chemical industry competitive enough in some instances to enter new markets. The fact that the industry can now reach... 

With the advent of synthetic dyes, the British chemical industry, like any other, had to assimilate the fact that from now on chemistry as knowledge must somehow be incorporated into the chemical industries. Competition had changed. It now involved innovation as a major factor. A new form of productive process had to be invented. In this regard, the traditional advantages of British chemical industries were no longer sufficient. It had cheap raw materials in the form of abundant supplies of coal tar. It had capital and controlled the richest market in the world. But it did not have much of a new resource—namely the chemically trained brains of able men. 

Asahi Chemical Industries (ACl, Japan) are now the leading producers of cuprammonium rayon. In 1990 they made 28,000 t/yr of filament and spunbond nonwoven from cotton ceUulose (65). Their continuing success with a process which has suffered intense competition from the cheaper viscose and synthetic fibers owes much to their developments of high speed spinning technology and of efficient copper recovery systems. Bemberg SpA in Italy, the only other producer of cuprammonium textile fibers, was making about 2000 t of filament yam in 1990. 

The principal objective of technical service in the chemical industry is to provide timely and professional information and support to downstream customers regarding chemical products and thek uses. It is neither cost-effective nor necessary for a consumer of chemical products to develop a staff of speciahsts having detailed expertise in all aspects of chemical raw materials and thek uses, particularly in a time of increa singly complex and rapidly technologically driven economies. Rather, this variety of expertise is provided in the chemical marketplace by technical service professionals whose knowledge and skills are made available by chemical products suppHers. As such, successful chemical companies provide technical service as a critical element of thek offerings to the marketplace making use of this aspect of the value chain to enhance thek competitiveness. 

Imperial Chemical Industries in Great Britain hydrogenated coal to produce gasoline until the start of World War II. The process then operated on creosote middle oil until 1958. As of this writing none of these plants is being used to make Hquid fuels for economic reasons. The present prices of coal and hydrogen from coal have not made synthetic Hquid fuels competitive. Exceptions are those cases, as in South Africa, where there is availabiHty of cheap coal, and fuel Hquids are very important. 

Chapter 10 begins a more detailed treatment of heterogeneous reactors. This chapter continues the use of pseudohomogeneous models for steady-state, packed-bed reactors, but derives expressions for the reaction rate that reflect the underlying kinetics of surface-catalyzed reactions. The kinetic models are site-competition models that apply to a variety of catalytic systems, including the enzymatic reactions treated in Chapter 12. Here in Chapter 10, the example system is a solid-catalyzed gas reaction that is typical of the traditional chemical industry. A few important examples are listed here ... 

From the foregoing it will be clear that in fine chemicals process development the strategy differs profoundly from that in the bulk chemical industry. The major steps are (i) adaptation of procedures to constraints imposed by the existing facilities with some necessary equipment additions, or (ii) choice of appropriate equipment and determination of procedures for a newly built plant, in such a way that procedures in both cases guarantee the profitable, competitive, and safe operation of a plant. 

Those identifying security-sensitive information should consider all ways that facilities might use and make public information (e.g., many chemical industrial facilities may at times engage in competitive bidding processes for construction of new facilities or infrastructure). Finally, information critical to the continuity of day-to-day operations should be identified and backed up. 

When the question is raised today as to how the European production industry faces global competition, the answer is quality competition and knowledge-based product differentiation. At the same time it is noted that classic areas of the chemicals industry, such as the production of textile dyes, is practically nonexistent in Europe today. This poses the questions of how do the economic actors... 

On 29 October 2003, the Commission adopted a proposal for a new EU regulatory framework for chemicals, the so-called REACH (Registration, Evaluation, and Authorisation of CHemicals). This new regulatory framework achieved all the objectives identified in the White Paper (EU 2001) and thus represents a model of sustainable development by pursuing its three main goals economic (industrial competitiveness), social (health protection and jobs), and environmental. 

The two most important aims of REACH are to improve the protection of human health and the environment from the risks of chemicals while enhancing the innovative capability and competitiveness of the EU chemicals industry. 

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