A historical overview and an analysis of the evolution of the chemical manufacturing has been presented in the context of global markets. It has been deducted from published information and an analysis of the situation that in the short term, a bipolar situation might arise whereby low value bulk chemicals may be manufactured in areas of the world where energy, raw materials and labour costs are lowest, whilst fine chemicals may be produced in the USA, Western Europe and Japan. During this period, the labour market will be profoundly effected, especially in the latter geographical areas mentioned. New skills needed to design, operate and maintain complex multipurpose batch plants will have to be provided by higher education institutions. In addition, new market demands for multifunctional products will be created by means of media influence. This will be a consequence of the rapidly expanding communications and information technologies. This situation creates a major challenge to higher education institutions that are the traditional providers of qualified labour. In particular, chemical engineering courses will experience the most change in emphasis. There is a need for more applied sciences and probably for the discovery of new physical or chemical phenomena to meet the needs of sophisticated customer requirements and relax the many simplifying assumptions often employed in process engineering.
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