Russia PP prices soar in the first week of September

MOSCOW (MRC)–Scheduled and unscheduled outages at local plants led to an acute shortage of polymer in the market and to a major price increase, according to ICIS-MRC’s Price report.

Supply of PP was tight from some producers in the Russian market back in the second half of August.

The market situation deteriorated sharply in the first week of September because of the shutdowns at three plants: SIBUR Tobolk, Stavrolen and Ufaorgsintez.

The shortage of PP amid strong demand led to a sharp and significant rise in prices of both propylene homopolymers (homopolymer PP) and propylene copolymers.

In early September SIBUR Tobolsk, Russia’s largest producer (with the annual capacity of 500,000 tonnes), took some of its PP production capacities offstream due to technical issues. The exact dates of the outage have not been announced yet.

Since 6 September, Stavrolen  – with an annual capacity of 120,000 tonnes – began a scheduled shutdown for about a two-week turnaround. Ufaorgsintez (with the annual capacity of 120,000 tonnes) plans a 12-day maintenance from 11 September.

While the shutdowns in Budennovsk and Ufa were planned, the outage at some production capacities in Tobolsk was a complete surprise for the market. Back in July, there was a surplus in the PP market, the market balance began to change in August, and many converters simply did not have time to build up additional inventories.

Last week, many sellers suspended or restricted their PP sales because they had scarce stocks, as a result, there were very few deals for homopolymer PP  concluded. And in some cases, offer prices reached Rb88,000/tonne FCA, including VAT, for homopolymer PP raffia.

The propylene copolymers market responded following the homopolymer PP market.  Deals for September shipments of Nizhnekamskneftekhim’s propylene copolymers reached Rb98,000/tonne FCA, including VAT, in the electronic trades, whereas they were in the range of Rb90,000-92,000/tonne FCA, including VAT, in late August.

MRC, a partner of ICIS, produces polymers news and pricing reports from Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan.