Europe’s Pursuit of Optical Sorting of Textile Wastes

The European Union and member countries are supporting advances in the optical sorting of textile wastes.  An excellent report, “Technical Monitoring on Optical Sorting and Textile Recognition Technologies at a European Level”, produced by France’s Eco TLC, a textile trade association, provides details on this support and the challenges faced in textile optical sorting.  Click here to read the report.

Textile waste is enormous.  Estimates found on the Internet are that in 2020 as much as 100 million metric tons of textiles might have been discarded globally. A substantial amount of this waste might be chemically treated so that the textile filers could be reused to make new textiles.  Being able to do so should significantly decrease the use of fossil fuels for producing synthetic textile fibers, e.g., polyesters, and free land for better use other than in growing cotton.

A major condition for increasing the chemical processing of waste textiles is for effective sorting of the textiles into categories related to the fibers making up the textile, e.g., sorting out polyester textile wastes from the other fiber types of wastes.  Although optical sorting of plastic wastes and other materials have been developed sufficiently well to be in commercial use, optical sorting of textile wastes needs further development.  The Eco TLC report referenced above provides an excellent review of the European status of optical sorting of textiles in 2020. 

Financial Statistics for Large Chemical Companies – Part 4

In earlier blogs I presented several financial statistics for large chemical companies. (Click here, here, and here to read these earlier blogs.)

In this blog, I am presenting in the following table, for twenty-six large global chemical companies, earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization expense (ebitda) as a percentage of sales compared to net income (earnings after interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization expense) as a percentage of sales: 

 

company	net income as % of sales	ebitda as % of sales	price to earnings ratio
air products	22.6%	40.9%	31.6
akzo nobel	5.8%	14.5%	23.3
albemarle	12.0%	26.2%	38.7
arkema	5.0%	15.0%	28.1
asahi kasei	4.8%	13.7%	14.6
basf	0.0%	11.0%	31.9
celanese	35.1%	40.2%	7.3
chemours	6.6%	17.6%	22.2
clariant	15.4%	26.0%	53.5
covestro	4.3%	13.8%	24.0
dow	3.2%	14.5%	11.6
dsm	6.3%	18.9%	47.6
dupont	0.0%	24.7%	35.3
eastman	5.8%	12.9%	49.1
evonik	3.8%	15.6%	22.3
fmc	12.0%	27.2%	21.5
huntsman	10.8%	17.7%	9.1
kemira	5.8%	17.9%	18.2
lanxess	14.9%	14.1%	4.6
linde	9.2%	31.7%	49.2
lyondellbasell	5.0%	14.0%	8.5
sekisui	5.2%	11.8%	16.0
solvay	0.0%	21.9%	23.8
trinseo	0.3%	10.0%	5.7
umicore	9.2%	16.6%	32.7
wacker	4.3%	14.2%	27.6
westlake	4.4%	16.0%	25.7
yara	5.9%	19.0%	11.6
average	7.8%	19.2%	24.8

 

Also in the table is the recent stock price per share to earnings per share ratio for each company.

In many of the company annual reports, management provide discussion on how the ebitda margins (ebitda as a percentage of sales) is an important financial metric for measuring the company’s success. The discussions suggest that ebitda margins are a more relevant metric than net income margins (net income as a percentage of sales).

Apparently, investors in these companies’ stocks also believe ebitda margins are more relevant than net income margins for investment decisions, as shown in the following table:

 

correlations	correlation result
net income as % of sales to ebitda as % of sales	76%
net income as % of sales to price to earnings ratio	-5%
ebitda as % of sales to price to earnings ratio	25%

 

This table shows correlations between net income margins to ebitda margins, net income margins to price to earnings ratios, and ebitda margins to price to earnings ratios. Price to earnings ratios indicate how much an investor is willing to pay for a company’s earnings – the higher the ratio, the more the investor is willing to pay.

The correlation between net income and ebitda margins is good, as would be expected. However, there is poor correlation between net income margins and price to earnings ratios compared to the correlation between ebitda margins and price to earnings ratios. This suggests to me that investors, like company managers, view ebitda margins as a better metric for evaluating the company’s success.

Chemical and Metal Shortage Alert – July 2021

The purpose of this blog is to identify chemical and metal shortages reported on the Internet.  The sources of the information reported here are primarily news releases issued on the Internet.  The issue period of the news releases is July 2021. 

Section I below lists those chemicals and metals that were on the previous month’s Chemical and Metal Shortage Alert list and continue to have news releases indicating they are in short supply. Click here to read the June 2021 Chemical and Metal Shortage Alert list. 

Section II lists the new chemicals and metals (not on the June alert).  Also provided is some explanation for the shortage and geographical information.  This blog attempts to list only actual shortage situations – those shortages that are being experienced during the period covered by the news releases. Chemicals and metals identified in news releases as only being in danger of being in shortage status are not listed. 

Section I. 

• Aluminum: global; production not keeping up with demand
• Chlorine: United States; production not keeping up with demand
• Construction materials:  United States, Germany, and the United Kingdom; production not keeping up with demand
• Foam: United States; production not keeping up with demand
• Lumber:  United Kingdom and United States; supply not keeping up with demand
• Polysilicon: global; production not keeping up with demand
• Steel:  global; production not keeping up with demand 

Section II.   Shortages Reported in July not found on the Previous Month’s Lists 

Citric acid: United States; supply not keeping up with demand 

Reasons for Section II shortages can be broadly categorized as:  

• Mining not keeping up with demand: none
• Production not keeping up with demand: none
• Government regulations: none
• Sources no longer available: none
• Insufficient imports:  none
• Supply not keeping up with demand:  citric acid