Petrochemicals

Simplify the complex petrochemical value chain.

Discover what ION can do for you

Over half of the world’s top chemical companies use an ION Commodities product

Increasingly frequent major market disruptions exacerbate the existing industry challenges of regulation, risk, and complex supply chains. An effective commodity management system is critical for sustaining and growing your business. Only ION has the breadth of commodity management software to meet needs across the petrochemical value chain. Whether you’re just moving off spreadsheets or a global enterprise spanning the petroleum value chain, ION has a solution to meet your needs while addressing the challenges and risks in today’s petrochemical markets.

Related sectors

  • Petrochemical consumers

    Companies with petrochemicals constituting a large component of their cost structure, including tire companies, clothing manufacturers, and manufacturers of consumer electronics.

  • Petrochemical logistics and storage

    Construction and management of assets to move and store petrochemicals.

  • Petrochemical manufacturing

    Petrochemical manufacturers use hydrocarbon base inputs like natural gas, naphtha, and sulfur to produce organic chemical compounds. These compounds can be liquid like methanol, benzene, and xylene or solid like plastics, synthetic rubber, and synthetic fibers.

  • Petrochemical marketing

    Storing, transporting, and selling the hundreds of petrochemicals used by manufacturers to produce goods for end customers.

Value delivered

  • Challenge

    Increasing volatility of commodity prices
     
    Volatile petrochemical prices make it difficult for:

    • Petrochemical manufacturers to preserve margins
    • Marketers to lock in margins
    • Petrochemicals consumers to control costs

    When a major disruption causes extreme volatility, effective hedging can keep your company solvent, while others may fail.

    Solution

    Reduce the impact of price volatility and preserve margins
     
    ION offers solutions to help you determine appropriate hedging strategies, execute those strategies, track the results, and report on your hedging to stakeholders and regulators. This leads to hedging strategies that are not only more effective, but also more efficient.

  • Challenge

    Accurately capturing and executing contract and pricing terms
     
    The petrochemical market’s contractual terms get more complicated every year. Those who cannot constantly adapt their business model to handle new pricing, products, terms, and conditions will lose business to competitors who do. With significant commodity price swings in a matter of minutes, executing trading strategies quickly can mean the difference between huge profits or losses. A system that can adapt to changes, accurately record pricing and terms, and execute quickly is essential to survive in today’s commodity markets.

    Solution

    Execute simple and complex transactions quickly and correctly
     
    ION offers solutions that capture and execute deals from simple, exchange-traded futures to complex, over-the-counter deals with multiple terms and conditions. These transactions are recorded in a database, so you can retrieve and report your positions as needed. ION’s solutions can integrate with major trading exchanges, seamlessly recording and flowing your trades and fills on the exchange to simplify trade capture. ION’s solutions can also integrate with pricing services to keep your prices and valuation up to date.

  • Challenge

    Increasing frequency of market and petrochemical supply chain disruptions
     
    A single event—like an extended petrochemical plant shutdown—can put a commodity company out of business. In recent years, these “once in a lifetime” events have become more frequent. Effective risk management is the only way for an organization to survive and thrive in such an environment. The increasing frequency of major market disruptions in recent years makes integrated risk management essential.

    Solution

    Effectively manage risk and volatility
     
    ION solutions allow businesses to manage risk effectively in today’s challenging environment. Our tools show exactly where risks are across your business portfolio, and the rate of change of those risks. This insight facilitates both preemptive actions before disruptive events occur and targeted, rapid mitigation actions after events occur. Depending upon the event, effective risk management empowers your business to thrive despite major disruptions.

  • Challenge

    Managing increasingly complex supply chains
     
    Worldwide demand for petrochemicals continues to increase as populations and economies grow. Years of logistics optimization have led to highly efficient supply chains, but with strained capacity across most logistics assets. Finally, supply chain disruptions are increasing in frequency and severity. All of this makes scheduling and managing logistics more difficult than ever, which is especially risky when done via spreadsheets.

    Solution

    More resilient and cost-effective commodity supply chains
     
    ION’s commodity management solutions help to manage your logistics supply chains for both solid and liquid products across all major modes of commodity transportation, including pipeline, vessel, barge, rail, and truck. Our solutions enable your business to better manage your daily operations. ION solutions also let you prepare for disruptions, enabling rapid mitigation when they occur. In today’s challenging business environment, better supply chain management is a competitive advantage.

  • Challenge

    Understanding your portfolio’s inventory positions
     
    Knowing exactly what commodities your business has and where they are is critical to running an efficient operation. When a disruption occurs, like a canal blockage, businesses with the most complete knowledge of their inventory positions can reroute quicker and more cost-effectively. Knowing what future inventories will look like can ensure your business meets its contractual obligations. Effective inventory management not only makes operations more efficient, but also keeps the business running when issues arise.

    Solution

    Improve the visibility of your global physical portfolio
     
    ION solutions can track and manage both your solid and liquid inventories, from a global level down to individual tanks and piles. This tracking can also be projected into the future, enabling your business to keep the right amount of stock on hand and prevent large imbalances from occurring. When disruptions occur, modeling can provide you with a plan for addressing it before your competitors. ION provides the best tools for you to manage your inventory across petrochemical lifecycles.

  • Challenge

    Managing vessel-borne logistics
     
    Managing the transportation of liquids or solids via vessel charters is becoming more challenging due to rising charter costs and increasing volatility. This is further complicated by IMO 2020 compliance and disruptive events like the Suez Canal blockage. If vessel chartering is a primary means for you to receive or deliver commodity products, active management of your chartering is critical.

    Solution

    Improve the visibility and efficiency of vessel chartering
     
    Softmar, ION’s vessel charting solution, enables you to manage your vessel chartering actively. It provides visibility into the location and status of the vessels transporting your valuable petrochemicals. This information is critical when disruptive events occur and you must find alternate routes, sources, or markets for your commodities. Softmar also provides visibility into chartering costs that enable you to better understand your cost structure and find opportunities for savings.

  • Challenge

    Improving your petrochemical supply chain
     
    Today’s petrochemical supply chains are increasingly complex and have to deal with a multitude of liquid and solid products. With the global distribution of both manufacturers and consumers of petrochemical products, there are many options for sourcing and delivering petrochemicals. These challenges make it difficult to know the true impact of a choice and which choices will yield the lowest costs while still meeting contractual obligations.

    Solution

    Gain competitive advantages by optimizing your petrochemicals supply chain
     
    WAM, ION’s supply and demand optimization solution, improves your decision making when dealing with a complicated supply chain. WAM gathers supply, demand, logistics, and cost data to quantify the impact of a mode of transport, loading and unloading dates, volumes, and other supply chain factors. This information is then used to determine the optimal choices to minimize costs and maximize asset utilization, while ensuring contractual obligations are met. WAM gives you a significant competitive advantage in supply chain management.

Commodity hedging
Marketing and trading
Risk management
Logistics and scheduling
Inventory management
Vessel chartering
Supply chain optimization

Products

  • Allegro

    A customizable, industry-leading CTRM for utilities and energy companies.

  • Aspect

    A multi-tenant, SaaS CTRM for liquid hydrocarbons and metals traders moving off spreadsheets.

  • Openlink

    A comprehensive, multi-commodity CTRM for industry leaders operating at scale.

  • RightAngle

    A CTRM with robust scheduling and logistics capabilities for liquid hydrocarbon companies.

  • Softmar

    A shipping solution for vessel chartering and operations integrated with ION’s CTRMs.

  • TriplePoint

    An out-of-the-box, multi-commodity CTRM with configurable functionality.

  • WAM

    An optimization solution for supply and demand planning, integrated with ION’s CTRMs.

Latest Commodities news

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Chartis Research ranks ION Commodities as a leading technology provider for energy markets for the fourth time in a row

28 February 2024
London – 28 February 2024: ION Commodities, a global leader in energy and ...

ION recognized by IDC FinTech Rankings as a FastTrack FinTech company

4 December 2023
LONDON – 4 December 2023: ION, a leading global provider of trading, analytics, ...

ION Commodities wins CTRM Software House of the Year for the second consecutive year at Energy Risk Asia Awards 2023

10 October 2023
LONDON – 10 October 2023: ION Commodities, a leading provider of energy and ...

Latest Commodities awards

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Energy Risk Awards 2023

Emissions and green certificates