Game Changing Scenarios

Four Game Changing Scenarios offer diverse opportunities for U.S. manufacturing companies. With 90% of all manufactured products using chemicals, the shale gas tsunami will sweep through the chemical industry into nearly all areas of manufacturing. 

Complete Substitution

Plastics, in particular, will have the opportunity to replace not-in-kind materials in entire product sectors. This includes ubiquitous items such as the paint can, glass food jars with metal tops, wood decking and fencing – the list is almost endless. The newly compelling economics and often superior performance of plastics will cause rapid and dramatic shifts. These wholesale not-in-kind switches are disruptive and often not understood by the market share incumbent. As they the visibility of the coming tsunami allowing them to switch, such as wood processing mill of decking to plastic decking manufacturing cost.

Partial Substitution
A typical automobile or refrigerator already has 20% chemical content. In these products, plastics compete with other products such as metals and glass. If the cost of plastics decline dramatically, manufacturers have an economic incentive to increase plastics content. In many cases this is complicated by a multi-tiered supplier structure to the OEM. It also requires manufacturing companies to re-engineer their designs as well as production process account for the different properties of plastics.

Oil versus Natural Gas
Certain chemicals, such as nylon, can only be technically produced via oil as a feedstock. Oil is a global commodity while natural gas, due to difficulty in trans-ocean transport, is a regional commodity. Oil prices continue their global rise, while U.S. natural gas have declined dramatically. This creates a cost incentive to replace oil based chemicals with those based on U.S. inexpensive natural gas. Manufacturers will need to re-engineer parts and designs to take in consideration the different properties of substitute chemicals. Patent and technologies could provide either a barrier or opportunity.

Import - Export
Over the last several decades, a number of manufactured products have shifted in large part or even entirely overseas. These include high volume, everyday products such as toothpaste tubes, ball point pens, and medical consumables. Products with a high chemical content are potential candidates to return to U.S. for manufacturing. They will be not aided in by lowered chemical prices but also in avoidance of trans-ocean logistics. For many of these products is no longer an existing US manufacturing base, thus whole product areas become wide open opportunity for new manufacturing players.

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Events and News

Oil and Gas Investors Summit

 

We will be presenting at the Oil and Gas Investors Summit in London June 16-19th 

 

Globalcon

 

We will be preseting on April 10th in Atlantic City at Globalcon join us 

 

Marcellus to Manufacturing

 

We will be presenting at the 3rd Annual Marcellus to Manufacturing conference on March 26th-27th in Charleston WV

 

 

The State Journal

 

Quotes from our presentation at InformEx 2014 download

 

InformEx 2014

 

TopLine Analytics presention at the Speciality and Fine Chemicals conference Informex 2014 in Miami: download

 

Canton Repository Article

 

Quotes from the Utica 2014 Manufacturing Summit: download

 

Utica 2104 Manufacturing Summit

 

TopLine Analytics presented Shale gas revolution to Chemical Renaissance to Manufacturing renewal on October 23 in Canton Ohio: download 

 

Brazilian Cracker in Marcellus

 

In a Environment and Energy article our views on a Brazilian ethane cracker located in the Marcellus: dowload

 

Business Journal Interview

 

In a cover story Aug 2013 article A chemical revolution that will shock the world interviewed TopLine Analytics download

 

White Paper with PricewaterhouseCoopers


TopLine Analytics is contributing author to the Shale gas: Reshaping the US chemicals industry. The paper has been carried or quoted in over 2 dozen publications: contact

 

Shale Petrochemical Manufacturing Summit

 

TopLine Analytics participated in a panel discussion and presented  Innovations in Shale Gas Demand at the November 7-9th Conference in Philadelphia PA: download

 

White Paper on Shale gas tsunami

 

What is the shale gas tsunami, how does it impact US manufacturing and what are manufacturing leaders doing to prepare: download