
The 9th Asia Surfactants Personal & Homecare Markets conference was held on 24-25 September, 2009 in Shanghai (China). The event was organised by the Centre for Management Technology and is the 9th edition of Asia’s biggest surfactant industry gathering, which has seen participation from over 400 delegates from Asia, Africa and Europe.
Many leading surfactants market players and end users sent teams to attend the conference to amass valuable contacts & nurture business partnerships. There were representative delegations from such companies as BASF, Huntsman (China), Wacker Chemical, Unilever, Rhodia, Indian Oil Corporation, Cognis etc.
A great deal of attention was paid to the feedstock for surfactants and homecare products. In particular, Mr. Hazimah from Malaysian Palm Oil Board reported that in 2008 world oleochemical capacity consisted of 8.85m tonnes, out of which about 4.5m tonnes are in Malaysia and China. The delegate of Frost & Sullivan described the applications of fatty alcohols (FA). Over 75% of the higher FA are used for three types of surfactants: FA sulphates make 17%, ethoxylates – 24%, ether sulphates – 35%. Global demand for linear alkylbenzenes during 2008 was estimated at 2.9m tonnes per year. Overall demand growth is expected to average around 2 percent per year to 2025.
World ethylene oxide (EO) and glycols market is expected to be steadily growing in the nearest future, with total EO demand reaching 24.5m tonnes by 2013.