By John Richardson A DRAMATIC dip in the cost of short-term financing seems to further explain why China’s manufacturers have ramped-up their inventories of raw materials. When raw-material prices, including those of petrochemicals, start to rise (see the example of polyethylene above), and credit is cheaper, the instinctive response is to stock-up ahead of […]
Asian Chemical Connections
Expect Some China Chemicals Price Recovery….
….but let’s wait for the details to makea firm judgement, following Wen Jiabao’s comments about more help for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), with the government also indicating an interest-rate cut by Q2 next year. How will any financial easing be balanced against the battle against inflation?
HDPE-LLDPE spread expands
By Malini Hariharan and John Richardson The spread between high-density polyethylene (HDPE) film grade and linear-low density PE (LLDPE) prices in Asia has steadily widened over the last five months to hit a high of $110/tonne, raising questions on how long this can continue. LLDPE has been consistently cheaper than HDPE since May, a reversal […]
China Downside Continues To Surprise
By John Richardson THE statistics speak for themselves. For example: *The full HSBC August manufacturing index for China, which was released last Friday, showed that manufacturing input costs were rising at their fastest rate for four months, suggesting that the battle against inflation is a long way from being won. Although the final HSBC […]
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