MILDURA 2009: World Pigment Demand Will Bounce Back

摘要

In December 2009, the world was still reeling from the effects of the "global financial crisis", the first signs of which had been: the sudden freezing of $US 2.2 billion worth of funds by BNP Paribas in August 2007; the collapse of Bear Stearns in March 2008; and the bankruptcy declaration by Lehman Brothers in September 2008. Prior to the crisis, all three had been among the top ten global investment banks, ranked in terms of assets. Despite healthy growth in China, world TiO2 pigment demand dropped by nearly 10% from 5.18 million tonnes in 2007 to 4.69 million tonnes in 2009. Against that background, the Mildura Conference of December 2009 became famous for two papers with long-term overviews of the TiC>2 value-chain, one by Dr Jim Fisher (of IBMA), the other by Dr Alan Heap (of Citi Investment Research). Both papers provided important signposts for TiO2 pigment and feedstock companies which needed to understand how they had arrived at the current position and which needed to plan for what to do next.