From Crisis to Catalyst : How Chemicals Are Powering Tomorrow

For the chemicals industry—so deeply embedded in the machinery of global trade—2025 is a reckoning. In conversations with executives across the sector, one theme surfaced again and again: uncertainty. But beneath the noise, a deeper shift is underway. The industry is no longer content to react; it is rethinking where it operates, how it builds resilience and what role it will now play in a fractured, fast- changing world. The old logic—low-cost global trade, predictable policy, centralized production—is breaking down. In its place, a new playbook is emerging: one rooted in resilience, reinvention and a sharper sense of long-term purpose. This report captures that pivot, in the voices of those confronting it firsthand.

And nowhere is this upheaval more apparent than in the turning tides of geopolitics. With supply chain disruptions from the Red Sea to the Panama Canal, conflict from Ukraine to the Middle East and now sweeping tariffs under a second Trump administration in the U.S., the industry is recalibrating—adapting to a world tilting away from global integration toward fragmentation and self-protection. But pressure doesn’t just disrupt—it accelerates change. In chemistry, as in life, higher pressures lead to faster reactions.