Europe fibres and clothing chems sector confidence down in September – CMCI

LONDON (ICIS)–Confidence in the European fibres and clothing chemicals sector fell across the board in September with only one indicator registering positive in the index, analysis of the ICIS Chemical Market Confidence Index (CMCI) showed on Friday.   

Current and future business conditions, profitability and order book volumes were all down from the previous month.

Only current business conditions were positive in the index, with future order book volumes flat at zero and all other indicators showing firm negatives.

The overall September CMCI hinted at stabilising conditions for the European chemicals sector as a whole after several volatile months, but improvements for business condition expectations and current profitability remained modest.

The newly established ICIS Europe CMCI aggregates sentiment from hundreds of petrochemical market players actively involved in price negotiations across more than 60 different markets.

The Europe CMCI runs from +100, to -100, with zero on each index representing neutral, or uncertain conditions, a negative score indicating bearish expectations and a positive score representing bullish expectations. The indices also gather sentiment on the comparison between the current situation and the situation across the past 12 months to give a complete picture of current market conditions and confidence. The information is gathered in the third week of each month.  A full methodology is available on request.

For more details on the overall Europe CMCI data, click here