In Europe, more lights will go out at chemical plants

Europe’s chemical industry is desperate for signs of a recovery—anything to indicate that it can repel the rising tide of cheap commodity chemical imports that is steadily replacing its own domestic production. But industry experts see little sign of a change this year. A growing consensus is that the new normal for this once-global chemical powerhouse is a state of decline. The region’s fundamental issue is that low-cost production capacity elsewhere in the world is growing. US exports of ethylene-based products more than tripled from 690,000 metric tons (t) worldwide in the first half of 2018 to 2.3 million t in the first half of 2025, New Normal Consulting notes in its monthly newsletter, the pH Report. “Chinese imports are also ramping up, as US tariffs force them to seek new markets,” it says.Against this backdrop, this year promises to be another difficult one for European chemical producers. “2026 will thus see a painful continuation of the pressure to review traditional business models and beliefs,” says Richard John Carter, an independent consultant. “The focus on cost cutting in many organizations will continue. However, experience shows that companies cannot ‘cost save’ their way to success.”Carter warns that switching from commodity to specialty chemicals is not going to be enough. “Specialties will not provide sufficient impetus to replace the collapse in commodity margins and thus will remain wishful thinking,” he says. That warning chimes with the Swiss firm Clariant, one of Europe’s oldest specialty chemical companies, which told the Financial Times newspaper