Edison Terra

If one wants to portray the petrochemical industry in a single image, it is possible that it is a set of tanks, spheres, ducts and metallic columns, with a brilliant grayish tone. To characterize it, a management focused on large volumes of commodities, cost competitiveness and important investments.

However, in this second decade of the twenty-first century, this image is one more example that appearances deceive. What brought us here will not guarantee the passage into the future. There are two trends that are changing the world, creating opportunities and new business models, even for those who seemed traditional enough to never stop being the way they used to be.

The first of these trends is the "VUCA" world. This is an expression created during the cold war to define the political instability of the time, was brought to the business world after the economic crisis of 2008. The "VUCA" is an acronym formed by the junction of the initial letters of the English words that stand for Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity and Ambiguity.

As a most obvious concept in the financial market, it also affects traditional sectors of the economy, and the petrochemical industry par excellence. Volatility begins in the price of raw materials, derived from oil or subject to supply variations, such as American shale gas. Uncertainty may come, for example, from geopolitics. The complexity is with trading flows, with the possibility of replacing one raw material with another - and there goes our ability to know what is cause and what is effect. 

Lastly, the ambiguity: if we take plastic as a reference, a material so intelligent, versatile and democratic and that has been constantly attacked, as the discard and recycling did not move at the same speed as the society's ability to use this material for various purposes. Used to reduce cost, weight, risk of food contamination, improve basic sanitation and so on, it is still incorrectly disposed of and pollutes beaches, seas and rivers. The use of renewable raw materials to produce chemicals is also increasing. When the source is agricultural, the impact and competitiveness greatly vary from region to region. Sugarcane stands out as a great alternative and Brazil is the actual and potential leader of this new source of production.

The second trend comes from innovation. And now, even more, of exponential innovation; 3D printing, internet of things, big data and other digital technologies - everything is connected, online and with complete possibility of customization. Earlier, we used to compare how technology and the amount of mobile phones were moving faster than television and the number of home appliances - benchmarks set in decades. Well, today we get scared as we find that Facebook took 5 years to have 100 million users worldwide. Want more? WhatsApp took 2.7 years, while Pokémon Go took only 25 days!

Looking at our reality, today we have ethanol as an alternative and renewable source for the production of ethylene and polyethylene. And there are many other initiatives. There is a lot of investment being made worldwide to enable a number of products to be made more competitively from renewable sources. Ethanol and sugar, perhaps second-generation, made from biomass and vinasse. 3D printing is already a reality and was considered vital by NASA to enable a manned mission to Mars. In the inability to deliver spare parts on demand for the necessary maintenance during the mission, why not manufacture the parts in space? Here is another opportunity for Green Plastic, made from a renewable, recyclable source and with a positive impact on the "carbon footprint"".

By mixing all this, one creates the ideal context for the petrochemical industry to keep reinventing itself. Because it needs it and because it can. With so much innovation and variety, there is room for the most important source of renewal: attracting talented avid people in this innovative and disruptive world, where the future may even be a continuation of the past, but on a logarithmic scale. Since we are talking about novelties, this is where millennials come in, born at the turn of the century. In addition to the familiarity of a generation that has emerged dominating the Internet, cell phones, tablets and connectivity, they are characterized by a differentiated relationship with work, seeking more quality of life and more purpose in everything they do. Attracting them will be a great challenge. This is a future discussion.