The global chemical industry has undergone a transformation since major financial crisis of 2008. The chemical industry benefitted from industry discipline and rapid economic recovery, especially in China and India. Despite unplanned outages, the industry demonstrated a slow and consistent improvement in production volumes. The overall margins improved as increase in raw materials could be passed on to the end-user even as operating rates remained stable. Reliance industries Ltd (RIL) foresees large opportunities in elastomers and other diverse chemicals. It has already announced its plans to set up a facility for manufacturing 100 KT of butyl rubber in partnership with Sibur. This is a significant step towards the company?s commitment to service India?s growing automotive sector by bringing in complex technologies. A new facility to produce butene-1 (40 KTA) and Methyl Tertiary Butyl Ether (144 KTA) using raffinate-1 from the butadiene plant will come on stream in FY-12. Chemicals Bu...