Lehman wave shakes the chemical industry

End markets such as Construction in 2009 went down 15 percent compared to 2007. This article will provide an explanation why the sales volume of upstream suppliers to Construction markets first went down 30-50 percent, and then recovered to around original levels, and then went down again. Royal DSM together with a group of scientists from Eindhoven University of Technology have investigated this effect based on the hypothesis that de-stocking in the long value chains of the chemical industry is the cause of a significant part of the decline, and that de-stocking has been triggered by the collapse of Lehman Brothers mid September 2008. It is further based on the hypothesis that the supply chains act elastically to a strong impulse, thus creating wave-like effects.