Sectors

Introduction - an overview as at January 2011 The chemics manufacture in southwesterly Africa has a long history, having been founded in the latter resolve of the ordinal century as a result of the demand for explosives and chemical substances to feed the mining patience. As the country has no significant upstream crude reserves and until recently little natural gas, its chemical industry has primarily developed around the gasification of coal. The brass function of a petrochemicals industry can be traced back to the 1950s when the initiative oil from coal plant was built at Sasolburg. It was, however, moreover in the sixties and seventies when the possibility of a chemicals industry found on local new seculars rather than momented feedstocks became possible. This followed the system of two large synthetic oil-from-coal plants by Sasol at Secunda during the early 1980s to provide strategic self-sufficiency in fuels. The synfuel sector, while assist of proc ess the South African oil industry as a reference point of fuels, is now also the major source of chemical feedstocks and intermediates in South Africa. The chemical industry has been influence by the political and regulatory environment which created a philosophy of isolationism and protectionism during the apartheid years.

This tended to sustain an inward approach and a focus on present moment reversal in the local market. It also support the edifice of small-scale plants with capacities ge atomic number 18d to local demand, which tended to be uneconomic. through isolation of the industry from interna tional competition and high raw material pri! ces as a result of import tariffs, locally impact goods have generally been less than emulous in exportation markets. Now that South Africa is once more richly part of the global community, South African chemical companies are steering on the need to be internationally competitive and the industry is reshaping itself accordingly. Another consequence of the focus on import replacement has been the building of chemical...If you want to get a just essay, enounce it on our website: OrderCustomPaper.com

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