A Product Manager's Guide to the Line Europe Actually Lost
Eurostat's August data puts EU basic chemicals output at 63.8 against a 2021 base of 100, the lowest reading the index has ever printed, while paints, detergents and other chemical products finish between 88.0 and 102.5. The decline everyone reports as European chemicals is one subsector deep, and that makes it a qualification problem before it is a price problem.
Five EU member states publish a monthly basic-chemicals production index. Germany, Greece, Spain, France, Italy.
In August, every one of them printed higher than the European average they are part of. Italy at 65.5, Greece 67.0, Germany 70.2, Spain 80.0, France 83.4, against an EU27 aggregate of 63.8.
So the whole is below all of its visible parts, and the countries that would explain it, Belgium and the Netherlands among them, publish the all-chemicals number every month and nothing at all one level down.
"If European chemical output is down a quarter, why is your European supplier's plant still running flat out?"
Because the quarter did not come from their line.
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