By John Richardson DESTOCKING is obviously not the main driver of the decline in China’s polyolefins market, despite what a dwindling band of optimists are still arguing. The glaringly transparent reason for the fallacy of the fading belief is a decline in key end-use markets for polyoleifins – and for other polymers and chemicals. Today […]
Asian Chemical Connections
PE Market Weakness Spreads To US
By Malini Hariharan After Europe, the US polyethylene (PE) market has started showing increasing signs of weakness. Spot offers have rapidly fallen putting downward pressure on June contracts that are currently under negotiation. Producers may have no choice but to settle at lower levels as exports to Asia is no longer a viable option. Spot […]
US Olefins, Polyolefins In Denial
By John Richardson THE majority of financial analysts seem to be clinging on to the hope that the recovery in petrochemicals demand from China is about to happen. This doesn’t just apply to our industry. Analysts across many sectors appear to have staked their reputations on a return to the Old Normal of booming […]
Don’t shoot the messenger
By Malini Hariharan There is a lot of free price information and advice available to Indian polymer buyers via emails and SMSs. The gist of the messages these days is that the Chinese market is weak, international and domestic prices will fall and buying should be in limited volumes. An email that landed in the […]
Shell Firms-up Interest in New US Capacity
By Malini Hariharan Shell Chemicals has become the latest entrant to a steadily growing list of companies looking at new cracker investments in the US. As we wrote about last week, Shell Chemicals told us in an interview at the Asia Petrochemical Industry Conference (APIC) in Fukuoka, Japan, that it was evaluating brown and greenfield […]
China market problems persist
By John Richardson WHILE ethylene prices rose to a 14-month high last week on very expensive oil and the Shell Chemicals outage in Singapore, the ICIS pricing C2 margin report calculated a staggering $134/tonne fall in Northeast Asian margins. Rising naphtha is clearly not being passed on down the chain. Meanwhile, low-density polyethylene (LDPE) margins […]
No escaping the squeeze
By Malini Hariharan With naphtha crossing $1000/tonne yesterday Asian petrochemical producers reliant on this feedstock remain caught in a tight spot. Costs are continuously rising while market direction for key derivatives is uncertain. Ethylene and propylene prices are holding firm at around $1,350/tonne CFR Northeast Asia and $1,500/tonne CFR Northeast Asia respectively, supported by a […]
Polyolefin numbers look good
By Malini Hariharan Pic source: www.brandft.co.uk The blog is in undertaking the difficult task of collecting demand numbers for polyolefins across major Asian markets. Preliminary estimates show that demand growth has been quite healthy in the two major markets – China and India. Chinese polyethylene (PE) demand (measured as local production plus imports minus exports) […]
Looking West for support
By Malini Hariharan As Asian markets head towards a quiet week, producers are probably hoping that developments in other regions will support their efforts to raise prices once trading resumes after the Chinese New Year holidays in the first week of February. European producers successfully raised February ethylene contract price by Euro25/tonne while propylene moved […]
Letting supply lead the way
By Malini Hariharan Conventional wisdom suggests that it is best to build a plant where the market is. But can ready availability of material develop markets. Take the case of India. In an interesting presentation at India Chem last week, Mathew George of Indian Oil Corp (IOC), pointed that each of the top five polymer […]
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