● INDUSTRY — PETROCHEMICALS

Petrochemical swaps between Europe, the Americas and Asia.

Base chemicals, solvents and intermediates move between Europe, the Americas and Asia every day. The volumes are too small for a dedicated tanker and too large to swap on a handshake. The same mechanics run on any corridor where two parties hold the same product on opposite shores.

See swap applications

The Opportunity

Where the market actually is

Michael supports swaps where the freight and tariff savings are clear and the materials are commodity-grade.

≈65 Mt/yr

Average annual global exports across the seven-solvent basket, 2020–2024 (IndexBox market overviews on UN and national customs data). The basket is methanol, ethanol, xylenes, toluene, isopropanol, acetone and MEK. Product that already crosses a border is product that a swap can replace.

4.6% / 2.7%

Average MFN duty on commodity chemicals into the EU / US (WTO World Tariff Profiles 2026; 2025 applied rates). Common commodity-chemical lines run up to 6.5%. A swap takes the duty leg to zero.

Solvent Basket Example

What's already moving across the corridor

Product	Average annual global exports, 2020–2024 (million MT)
Acetone	0.8
Isopropanol	1.3
Toluene	3.2
Full 7-product solvent basket	64.95

Global exports across all corridors, not the flow on any one of them. Compiled from IndexBox market overviews on UN Comtrade and national customs data, 2020–2024 averages.

Swap Applications

What this looks like for petrochemicals

Location swap

Rotterdam ⇄ Houston base chemicals

Both parties serve each other's local customer from local stock, avoiding the transatlantic ocean freight leg and the customs duty that comes with it.

Freight + duty leg avoided

Quality swap

Purity-grade arbitrage

A producer with slow-moving high-purity acetone swaps against a counterparty's commodity-grade stock. One recovers dead inventory, the other captures a reprocessing margin.

Grade differential captured

Time swap

Production ramp-up bridging

A manufacturer facing urgent demand draws on a counterparty's current inventory now, repaying from its own production once the ramp-up completes.

Shutdown cost avoided

Compliance Built In

REACH, TSCA, and transport classification — pre-screened before you sign

Core petrochemical intermediates like benzene, toluene and MDI carry active REACH restriction entries with nested use-case conditions. That is exactly the kind of check ARCO runs automatically on every swap.

See a petrochemical swap from start to end.

Request a walkthrough of a petrochemical swap.