Petrochemicals

Helping petrochemical companies navigate a changing industry landscape and build their businesses for the future.

The global petrochemical industry—the largest subsector of chemicals—is evolving rapidly. To make effective strategic decisions, companies must understand shifting industry dynamics, demand trends, and sources of cost advantage.

Over the past decade, we have supported petrochemical companies and integrated oil companies on more than 300 strategic and operational projects worldwide. By leveraging our deep capabilities and working closely with NDB Holding Group’s energy and operational experts, we advise clients across five key areas: strategy, organization, operations, capital productivity, and marketing & sales.

Examples of Our Work

• Geographic Expansion Strategy
  Helped a major petrochemical company design and implement a long-term plan for geographic growth. By focusing on core competitive advantages and screening lower-value opportunities, the company doubled its market cap and identified additional upside potential.

• Business Unit Integration
  Assisted a leading oil company in merging four geographically and administratively separate petrochemical units into a single cohesive organization. Within six months, the client launched the first phase of the merger, finalized supply-chain planning processes, and mapped non-production workflows.

• Marketing & Sales Performance Improvement
  Supported an Eastern European petrochemical company in optimizing pricing behavior. Collaborating with 40 client team members, we identified 60 actionable improvements that delivered $130 million in bottom-line impact within one year, while establishing a pricing committee and redesigning marketing roles.

• Operational Value Creation for IPO
  Partnered with a large petrochemical company to prepare for a subsidiary IPO. Through site diagnostics and operational best-practice blueprints, we identified over $500 million in improvements from fixed-cost reductions, variable-cost savings, and margin enhancement.

Featured Capabilities

To help clients navigate uncertainty, we use a scenario-based planning approach—allowing companies to test strategies under multiple market conditions and understand the key drivers of success. Our proprietary tools include:

• Margin Analysis Models – Calculate historical and projected cash margins for individual petrochemicals, assessing relative attractiveness across routes, regions, and time.

• Cost Curve and Trade Optimization Tool – Estimates price and profit impacts from changes in demand, capacity, costs, and competitor actions.

• Price Outlook Linkage Model – Links hydrocarbon prices and chemical chain margins to create micro-economically consistent price sets for market planning.

• End-use Market Mix Chemicals Database – Evaluates exposure to economic changes across business units or the entire organization.