A key component of the modern world economy, the chemical industry delivers products and innovations to enhance everyday life. It is also an industry in transformation where chemical executives and workers are delivering growth and industry changing advancements while responding to pressures from investors, regulators, and public opinion. Discover how leading companies are approaching these challenges here on the chemical show.
Join Victoria Meyer, president of Progressio Global and host of the chemical show. As she speaks with executives across the industry and learns how they are leading their companies to grow, transform, and push industry boundaries on all frontiers. Here's your host, Victoria Meyer.
Hi, this is Victoria Meyer, welcome back to the chemical show where chemicals means business. Today I am bringing you our annual highlight episode that I like to call wrapped and replayed. So this is a play on words in some respects. So Spotify's wrapped, which you may know they bring out every year, um, in December, highlighting the top things that you may have listened to over the course of the year, whether it's music podcasts, et cetera, and then Apple's replay.
The other piece of this is, this is a bit of a Christmas gift for you, right? So we are publishing this on December 24th. Christmas is almost here, the holiday season, whether you're celebrating Christmas or Hanukkah or Kwanzaa, or, um, frankly, just. The happy new year and, and having the opportunity to celebrate the end of the year. So this is a bit of my gift to you. What I'm bringing to you today is, uh, the top five episodes of 2024 as well as a few interesting tidbits along the way.
So I encourage you to listen. Or watch if you're doing this on YouTube, um, listen to learn number one, what you should listen to next or re listen to, because we know that you may not listen to every episode and now shocker, but I know that that's true. So now that you're on break, hopefully, it's a great chance just to. Put on the chemical show, hang out while you're, I don't know, drinking hot coffee and looking at the fireplace. Great time to listen to and catch up on the chemical show.
That's number one. Number two, you're going to learn some fun facts about the chemical show and its fans, you and your peers who are listening to the chemical show. And then three, this is a great. share with your friends and colleagues, giving them the gift of the chemical show. So it is really an all encompassing all in one, a little bit about what the chemical show is, a lot about what our top episodes are and who our audience members are. So I encourage you to keep sharing this episode.
Speaking of gifts, my additional gift to you is. Is the guide to the top 10 leadership lessons shared here on the chemical show in 2024. So these are insights gleaned from the chemical show guests, including Michael Hines from BASF, Bonnie Tully from Avonik and Sean Riley from Vessonautical. Visit thechemicalshow. com slash leadership to get your copy. I'm going to also link to that in the show notes so that you have that.
Um, and what I really love about this is it is not just quotes and insights. There's also some questions and suggestions for you to reflect on and take action on. Perfect. For year end, because if you're like me, I find that the end of the year and the beginning of the new year, a great time to take pause, to reflect, to take a look back and see how far we've come and then get ready for the year ahead. So again, the chemical show. com slash leadership, grab it. You don't want to miss it.
It's a great set of insights and a guide to help you in your career and your leadership. Now, on to today's episode. So wrapped and replayed, a few fun facts about the chemical show. Number one, we are a global podcast, super exciting, listened to in 115 countries around the world, which is amazing. And 63 percent of our listeners of course are in the U S. Probably not a surprise given that I'm sitting here in the U. S. and many of my guests are.
But what I find amazing and actually just a great reflection of our industry is that we are in a global industry and people are interested in listening and learning from each other in this global marketplace that we're living in. The second thing about our listeners, we're all a bit mid career. Now the reality is it's a bell curve in terms of distribution of who's listening and what their experience is in the industry. Um, Transcripts I'm going to say that most of our listeners are mid career.
The reality is, um, you know, I find it a little bit better maybe than saying middle aged because what is that really? But the average age of our listeners is 45 to 54. Again, not a surprise when you look across the chemical industry and who is here. However, I would also say that we're actually almost equally split across a variety of Of age groups and demographics, whether you're early career, mid-career, or late career.
The chemical show is for you, um, and for your colleagues and you know that, the chemical show is growing. Super excited to say that we have grown by 65% in 2024, and that is downloads, listeners, subscribers, followers on LinkedIn and subscribers to our email list. So, number one, if you are listening to this on Spotify, Apple, iHeartRadio, one of any number of platforms, and you are not currently an active subscriber, go hit that subscribe button. You don't want to miss an episode.
If you are already a subscriber, well, hey, thank you. We really appreciate that. And I think it's just a sign of the impact. That the podcast has, as well as an indication of who you are as listeners interested in learning, growing, and connecting more with people across the industry. So kudos to you. So here's my other piece that's interesting. So I dug into Spotify wrapped and Spotify actually has some of the better data, um, because they put a little bit more work into it and.
And our listeners are kind of across, spread across Spotify, Apple, YouTube. Some people go like something like 10 percent of our audience goes direct to the website to listen to each episode. So if you didn't know that that was a possibility, now, you know, um, if you did know that was a possibility. Great. Kudos to you. Again, you're listening, you're reading, you're following. That's critical. So, um, but Spotify likes to provide us a little bit of information. I like that.
The other top shows that you and your fellow chemical show listeners listen to and follow. So may or may not be surprised by this list. Number one, the Joe Rogan show. Number two, the Lex Friedman show, or maybe it's the Lex Friedman experience. Number three, the daily, which is a news show that comes out daily. All right. So those first three are not a surprise. I have heard about them.
Um, I'm not really surprised because they are also the biggest podcasts globally across all demographics, all groups of listeners, et cetera. All right. So here's one that I did not know. All in with Shemex, Jason, Sax, and Friedberg. I don't know. Who are you that are listening to this and what is this show all about? So that's number one. And then the second one, which I think is a little hilarious and I guess I didn't know about it because it's a secret. It is Matt and Shane's secret.
So, um, maybe go check them out. They are what some of your fellow listeners are listening to. Maybe you're already subscribing and listening, who knows? Um, what does that tell me though, about the chemical show listeners, what they like to listen to and what Um, what you, what I know about you, number one, you were willing to listen to long podcasts. So, okay. If, I don't know if you guys are aware of this, Joe Rogan, Lex Freeman.
And then I think I, it was the all in with Shemax and Matt and Shane's. These episodes are all like an hour and a half long. So what's ironic to me is when I first started the chemical show three and a half years ago, somebody messaged me and I'm always looking for feedback. And by the way, if you've got feedback. Reach out, let me know, send me a message on LinkedIn, add a comment to YouTube if you're watching YouTube, Spotify, Apple, there's different sources to get a hold of me. So please do.
I love your feedback. I read every email. I look at every comment. It's super cool. Um, and Um, so back to this hour and a half long episodes my episodes, as you guys know, of the chemical show are typically around 30 minutes and yet I have had people contact me when I said, Hey, what can we do differently? Somebody said, you know, that episodes are really long. Have you ever thought about splitting it into two? I'm like, no. But thank you for that feedback.
Um, obviously, as you know, you can always pause and come back to it. Um, but however, I am thinking that perhaps maybe we could do some longer episodes. I personally try to target around the 30 minute mark. I think it's a lot for a busy professional to get some insights and try to really bring what's needed, um, and informative to you.
But, um, if you're willing to listen to an hour and a half of two or two hours of episode, by the way, I will listen to a couple of those other shows that we've talked about. I'm not sure I really want to listen to him for two hours, but somebody does, so. Great. Anyway, I don't know where I'm going with this, but we may be getting some longer episodes. Probably not. I do find 30 to 35 minutes is a sweet spot, but if you would like a longer episode, let me know.
And we will work on integrating those in. So that's number one. Um, number two, what do I, what have I learned about? You and your fellow chemical show listeners when I look at this data and demographics is You like based on what I'm seeing about your top podcasts business political commentary and maybe a little bit of comedy thrown in now By the way, this is in contrast to the general podcast listening demographic, right? Which is entertainment, right? So, uh, Joe Rogan is up at the top.
Collar Daddy, is up at the top. I don't know if you guys ever listen to that. It's a show. Um, and it's a, it's a top, So it's a great show, I guess for some people, true crime, um, whether it be crime jockeys or one of many others and then lifestyle. So again, those are the kinds of things that, um, people in the chemical show community typically listen to versus the average podcast listener. So you're a bit more business minded. I'm probably not surprised.
Um, anyway, that's a bit about who you are and what we know about you and what we know about you and your fellow audience members. And I hope you find that piece of it interesting. Now let's talk about the top episodes of the year. So the first two episodes, um, of our top episodes that are. Audio podcast. So these are things that you're, you know, listening to, obviously on Apple, Spotify, on the website, one of the other apps, iHeartRadio, et cetera.
So the number one episode listen to as an audio podcast is John Richardson, the first episode of the year, actually. So episode 144. Petrochemicals in 2024 capacity overbuilding codependent markets. Okay. I'm actually going to link to that so you can find it easily. But, um, episode number one of the year has been the most listened to episode of the year.
There's some math we can talk about, but the reality is, People want to know what's going on in markets, which also leads me to the second most popular episode was from Steve Lewandowski of chemical market analytics close second, also published in January of 2024, which was the 2024 chemical market outlook. Or as I like to say, Call her murky. So, you know, it's my little play on call her daddy. If you might remember we asked Steve Hey Steve, how would you describe markets in 2024?
Murky, and in fact, I'm gonna include a clip here of Steve talking about the markets and what the expectations were at the beginning of the year
So let's go ahead and just start out at the high level and talk about the general state of economy as we enter into 2024. What is it that you and your team are observing and reflecting on 2024? What are the key things that we should be looking at?
Yeah, I think the only consensus from an economic standpoint is there's no consensus
Back to that "foggy".
You can listen to the news and 1 view is, yeah, it's going to get better. It's not as bad as we thought. And, demand is going to come back and the other side of the equation. You hear other saying. You know, I'm looking at factors and this is going to be really in a, in a bad place for a long term. And, we thought it was going to happen in 23, but it's definitely going to happen in 2024. So back to foggy, this is why it's foggy.
How do you really assess the consumers, the health of the consumers? At the end of the day, the consumer is going to be willing to buy widgets of any form or fashion. And, you know, that's the key. And, I've read a report on looking at money in circulation, M1, M2. And then it seems, you know, a guy quoted, look the trends today are, are aligned with some of the biggest, pullbacks in the economy that we've ever seen. And how do you argue with that?
But, okay, there's more controls, the feds there, there's World Bank and, all these different regions have different control mechanisms. Maybe they can tone that down a bit. But we still see a lot of headwinds in China. China's, you know, it's been a growth engine for many, many years and the shutdown, the COVID issues, young people not having jobs, the aging population, they're shrinking in population.
There's a lot of challenges coming out of China, which, again, they sneeze and everyone else is going to catch a cold because they're such a big economy, so we're watching the banks. We're watching the interest rates. Will construction restart? Our fed said 6 drops over the course of this year in the rate. So we'll see how that ultimately plays out. And, you know, these economies getting heated, overheated and consumers. What's their debt level? Have they pulled their bank accounts down?
Do they have money available? Inflation's been problematic. So, the things you have to spend money on, heating your house, paying your bills, buying food mobility, all that's going up in, in cost. So the extra money you have to buy widgets. That pool of money is decreased.
our top episode overall this year, when we combine our audio listens as well as YouTube, and by the way, I've started talking about this. YouTube is one of the fastest growing podcast platforms. Globally. Um, probably a lot of reasons behind it. Number one, owned by Google and Google and YouTube both are promoting it. They want to keep you on the platform. That'd be one thing. But the second piece is I know, you know, you're interested. What do people look like?
Maybe there's some additional graphics and insight, which we sometimes do bring in on our YouTube channel that share, um, some information about whatever the topic is that we're talking about and more. If you're not already following us and subscribe to the chemical show podcast on YouTube, do it. We publish some additional episodes and interviews there as well as we publish a lot of our shorts.
So if you're just looking for bite sized nuggets of content and insight, check out YouTube is a great place. The chemical show podcast. We've got a ton of content there for you.
And actually we've got it categorized by Types of shows you might be interested in whether it be sustainability whether it's our CEO series and more So YouTube is a great place to go Again, back to when we look at our number one episode overall, it was episode 188 with Eric Appelman and the title of that episode is, um, How to Scale Sustainable Technology. So Eric is from Aduro Clean Technologies and, um, that episode just blew up, especially on YouTube, also across the audio platforms. Um, why?
Aduro listed on the NASDAQ just. Four days prior to that episode being published. So it tied in with just a great bump in traffic. And in fact, Eric references, I'll briefly on our podcast episode, which was recorded, frankly, a couple of weeks before we went, we published it. So he knew it was coming. I didn't know the exact timing. It was phenomenal. Um, a great bump. And by the way, great. Interesting topic, um, interesting technology and Eric is a, a wealth of knowledge.
So I'm including a little clip here from Eric. Um, I hope you listen to that.
The other theater where we are acting and that is the sort of beautiful ambidextrous life of a good startup. This is that we are working with investors. We are financed by retail investors, and it is a fantastic thing to realize that we are going to be listing on the Nasdaq very soon.
That's exciting.
attract more, uh, more money, more funds for this one.
Are you, are you currently listed today?
We are listed in Toronto and in Frankfurt. Uh, on, on, uh, starters, exchange, but that's relatively low liquidity, obviously by going to the United States, uh, you come in, in heaven of capital.
Yeah. Yeah. I think that's very cool. And I think, uh, I, until recently I hadn't realized that, startup companies such as yours were actually listing on the NASDAQ to, as a means of raising capital. So I think that's really exciting.
Yeah. Yeah. There's actually, originally it starts often by making your retail investors able to, to trade. Yeah. Because there's no liquidity, of course, until you're enlisted, but it is done in a secondary step. But it becomes a way To attract money. And we have done a couple of raises in a row. We've, by the way, never traded down. Every new raise was for a higher price than before. And, uh, yeah, that, that is how we work. And this would be a very exciting next step.
Can't wait to see it. Yeah.
Moving on our most frequent guests. So this is of no surprise to you. If you are a regular and longtime listener of the chemical show podcast, it is John Richardson from ICIS. John has been on the chemical show six times over the past several years, twice in 2024. Um, and.
A big part of it is John just brings some great and sharp insights into what's going on in chemical markets, particularly the effect and influence of China in terms of what's happening in Chinese markets, um, and within the Chinese economy and what the influence of that is on the rest of the chemical industry and in particular polyolefins. John's episode, I'm going to include a clip from here is episode 179, how the global chemical market is shifting.
And it is, and you know, you and I both know it. So listen to that clip, um, and then go follow the full episode. And then in the meantime, if you are not following John on LinkedIn, you need to, so I will include a link to John's LinkedIn profile. He publishes. Um, regularly, perhaps daily, at least weekly, um, some really sharp and great analysis and insights about what is driving chemical markets.
Um, he has sometimes a bit of a contrarian view, definitely very outspoken and, uh, just a delight to speak with and to bring to you on the chemical show.
I think fundamentally we've got this still in commodity chemicals now. It's got this massive imbalance between supply and demand, the, the scale of which we've never seen before, right? I mean, to give you an example I very rarely look at Styrene. I looked at Styrene for a client last week, and it's not how the data is consistent across all the petrochemicals. So here's the numbers I can remember. So we have operating rates averaging globally from 2024 to 2030 at 75%.
Which, as you know, is very bad, um, historically the long term 88 percent globally. Now, what you can do, a very simple exercise, which is wrong, of course, because it's just guesswork, is you keep production the same, which is about demand, isn't it, globally, and you divide production by capacity, you take capacity down to get back to 88%, which is normal in the district conditions. To do that, Capacity over that period have to fall by 1. 2 million tons of total across the seven years.
That's a lot. Yeah, as opposed to our base case of capacity growing at 5. 6 million tons. So it's a mirror image, right? Imagine that. So it has to shrink by 1. 2 rather than grow by 5. 6 to get back. And you start, you know, going into the data, why are we are where we are? Well, to keep saying, I need a wisdom of crowds thing, um, about what people thought would happen in China before 2021, the Evergrande moment, which we've talked about before.
And across petrochemicals, they thought China would carry on growing 6 to 8 percent a year. Now it transpires, that's not going to happen because of demographics, the end of the property bubble, the geopolitical issues. So it's going to grow 1 percent say, 3%, some people say minus even. Wow. Chemicals, possibly, I don't know. But we know certainly 6 to 8 isn't going to happen.
So I have a few, um, honorable mentions I'm going to talk about. There is the episode that prompted the most phone calls So I will say I do get feedback sometimes quite quickly from people When they've listened to an episode so I have some you know Some of our loyal listeners call me on the you know, the hotline and say oh my gosh You've got an error in editing here or whatever That's usually what I hear about. So by the way, again, if you hear that, send me a message on LinkedIn.
Sometimes oops is make their way through the system despite our quality check. And we want to make sure your listening experience is amazing. So, um, that's that, but the episode that prompted the most phone calls, in fact, some of these phone calls were coming in at seven 30 and eight AM. So delighted to know that you guys are listening early and I've heard from a number of people that they listen in the morning as they're getting ready for work, perhaps as they're commuting to the office.
So I find that's cool. I'm happy to be part of your Tuesday routine, but the episode that prompted the most phone calls on the day it dropped was episode 169 with. Uh, Gaurab Chakrabarty, who is the CEO of Solugen. Seriously, I had like three phone calls before 8am. Victoria, let's talk about that episode. Yeah, let's talk about that episode. So I think it was just great. Um, obviously Solugen has a great story.
They are definitely a bit of a media darling in the sense that they are holding out a lot of hope, right, for the industry in terms of their advancements around green chemistry and driving to a sustainable future, um, for the industry, which many of us are really hopeful for, right, where, um, it's a path that we're on as we continue developing and growing and innovating throughout the chemical industry so again, I'm going to link to that episode with Gaurab. Great conversation.
And by the way, he was one of the leaders that I really wanted to get onto the chemical show. So it took a couple of years to make it happen and was really glad to have that opportunity and that conversation. My next, uh, little interesting tidbit is the guest that made it to the top 10 twice and that is Eric Bober of Nexen ECA. So I'm gonna link both of Eric's episodes on here And it was just great. We talked a lot about green methanol. We talked about what was going on in the industry.
And so Eric was definitely a popular guest. In fact, probably if we add his downloads together from both of his episodes, he's absolutely in the top five by the way, but both episodes were in the top seven. So I may have to go back and do the math and I'll get Watch LinkedIn. I'll give you an update in terms of where he stacks up and where his episodes stack up. But a couple of great episodes there. Additional episodes that make honorable mention, right?
So, Driving Innovation and Recycling, which was a episode that I did on behalf of the ACC highlighting some of their sustainability and innovation leaders, that was top five in YouTube.
So, got a lot of great downloads and a lot of follows in YouTube, frankly, because it's An interesting topic, um, and then the other one was six trends influencing the chemical industry over the next five years, which was a solo episode I did, um, talking about the trends that are influencing the industry, obviously, uh, I added on my seventh trend the following week, which by the way, the seventh trend is sustainability. So there's your showstopper.
But with that six trends, we've also published a guide. So here is your second gift of the holiday season. When you go to the chemical show. com backslash seven trends. You can download our guide to the seven trends that are influencing the chemical industry through 2030. Insightful, um, insights gleaned from both the chemical show and the conversations we've had here as well as our own research. Um, and I think you're going to really appreciate it.
Consider that my second gift to you of the holiday season. As we wrap this up, you might ask, what does it take to get to the top five? And by the way, this is going to be something we're going to be promoting to your marketers and, and guys, you sometimes say, how do I get my CEO on? How do I get somebody for my leadership team on? How do I get on the chemical show? Well, um, a couple of ways. Number one, again, reach out to me on LinkedIn, send me a message.
Number two, if you go to the chemical show. com under opportunities, there's a chance to fill out some information about being a guest on the podcast. I would love to have you and have your leadership here, but how do you get to the top five? Like what's the magic mojo? Number one, it is clearly about market outlooks. So the chemical show listeners, you are interested in understanding what's happening in the industry today and in the future.
So we will continue to publish market outlooks, particularly at the beginning of the year in January. And I've got a couple of great ones coming out. I can't wait to share those with you, um, as well as midyear. Right? So important to stay attuned with what is going on in markets and in the industry. Um, it's so critical. The second thing is timely news, right? So I shared with you about my episode with Eric Appelman from Aduro.
We'd absolutely got a bump from Aduro's cycle and their marketing team was really strategic as we conversed about this to getting the episode on at the right timing. Timing is everything, right guys, you know this, um, you can't time the markets, but you can time the chemical show both from a length perspective, but also when you appear on it. So let's talk about that. I think timing is everything. The third piece is sharing.
So we talked about Eric Bober's both episodes being in the top 10 of the episodes this year. The reality is. His episodes were also the most shared on LinkedIn. Um, and what I know and what you should know is that sharing within your network helps grow awareness and visibility and downloads and listens and shares your story and shares your message, which is so critical. Eric and his team really activated and did a great job.
My fourth thing of what it takes to get in the top five learning, right? So if we think about the six trends. Episode which I added another trend on later. So it's really the seven trends. Um, Um, it's about learning. It's about, again, being interested in what's going on in chemical markets and how that influence you and your business and what you can learn from it. So I think that is so critical.
And then the last thing is, is having an interesting hook, whether it's your CEO, whether it's your business model, um, whether it's the fact that. You know, you're the first 2 billion unicorn in the industry, which is the case of solution. And in my interview with Gaurav Chakrabarty, um, great conversation, but having an interesting hook makes it critical to having a great episode, um, and an episode that gets to the top five. So I can't wait to see.
Which episodes make it to the top five in 2025, but I'm so glad to have you here in 2024 listening, sharing, learning, and growing. So thank you. Thank you for being part of the chemical show podcast. Um, thank you for the feedback that you provide throughout the year. Thank you for sharing the podcast and I hope you have a wonderful holiday season and I look forward to connecting with you in the new year. Thanks.