Jennifer Hawkins, Contributing Writer07.03.19
It was a tumultuous first half of the year for the global epoxy resins industry. Global economic headwinds and the U.S./China trade war weighed down on consumer sentiment and this created a pervasive negative outlook for the epoxy resins and its downstream markets. Then on March 21, a tragic explosion at a pesticide/fertilizer plant in Jiangsu, China saw a huge swathe of plants in the surrounding areas being shut for safety inspections. Up to 50 percent of China’s epoxy resins capacity is based in this region. There was a collective intake of breath as market participants across the world feared that supply in China and then Asia would suddenly tighten and send prices rocketing. But then, news emerged that the downstream plants had also been shut, meaning that both epoxy resins supply and demand in China had ground to a halt. As a result, the accident hardly registered a blip in the Asian, European and the U.S. markets for most of April and
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