Price adjustments made by a Middle Eastern PE producer on May shipment offers to China and Southeast Asia market showed a remarkable gap, SSESSMENTS.COM noted. To the China market, the producer’s May shipment offers for HDPE Film and LLDPE Film C4 dipped by $10/ton and $30/ton, respectively. While to the Southeast Asia market, the offers for HDPE Film surfaced with a notable reduction of between $100-110/ton. Likewise, LLDPE Film C4 offers to the region also plunged between $120-130/ton. All compared to April shipment’s level. At the time of writing, the producer managed to sell a small volume of HDPE Film and LLDPE Film C4 to the Southeast Asia market at the initial offer levels.
In China, buying sentiment is better hence sales are also considered good. Considering a positive response from buyers, quite a number of foreign suppliers moved their cargoes to the China market. On the contrary, buying sentiment in the Southeast Asia market is rather bearish. Even in Vietnam, the demand has slowed down substantially compared to last month. Most Vietnamese buyers only bought on an as-needed basis. Big buyers are mostly asking for lower prices of $600/ton-level for HDPE Film and LLDPE Film C4 cargoes. However, such a level is unacceptable; the producer is likely to reject bids at below $700/ton. In Thailand, the producer has not many customers. Whereas in Indonesia, the demand is sluggish, the producer is having difficulties selling their cargoes to the market due to exchange rate issues coupled with lower price expectations. In conclusion, if the sales in Southeast Asia remain slow the producer will not hesitate to redirect their allocation to China market, SSESSMENTS.COM was told.
Further added to SSESSMENTS.COM, the producer believes that it would be unlikely for Middle Eastern PE prices to the Southeast Asia market available at below $700/ton, especially for now as feedstock prices have shown some rebound, therefore buyers’ confidence should be improved onward. Moreover, the producer assumed that the reason behind the rebound in naphtha and ethylene prices may be caused by some maintenance shutdown at several crackers in China and South Korea. Besides, market talks have it that a Thai PE producer has been actively sourcing ethylene to ramp up production for PE following the good margin and low ethylene prices. In the days to come, the producer believes that PE prices would hover around $700/ton plus.
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Tags: Asia Pacific,China,English,Middle East,NEA,News,PE,SEA
Published on April 30, 2020 4:32 PM (GMT+8)
