Given today's climate of high energy and fuel costs, active supply chain management in the chemical industry is becoming increasingly important. This is the main finding from a recent ICIS and J&M Management Consulting survey of producers and logistics providers, carried out to discover and understand the leading issues in the sector today.

Of those responding to the survey, 84% cited the rising cost of energy and fuel as one of the most dramatic changes faced by chemical companies over the past three years. The resulting impact on raw material costs and transport and distribution costs has raised senior management's attention to supply chain and logistics issues and their role in improving business performance.

'The recent rapidly rising energy and fuel costs, and knock-on effects through business value chains, have probably given companies a taste of things to come, particulary as oil prices fall back again in the short term', notes James Black, chemical sector head at J&M.