A Middle Eastern PE producer made hefty adjustments on import offers to the Southeast Asia market as the producer obtained encouragement from manifold factors. On June 11, a market source reported to SSESSMENTS.COM that a Middle Eastern PE producer reportedly had increased the company’s offers for PE across all grades significantly. As compared to a week earlier, the producer’s import offers to Malaysia and Indonesia markets were hiked between $50-70/ton for HDPE Film, by $30/ton for LDPE Film, and between $30-40/ton for LLDPE Film C4. All offers are for July shipment.
At the moment, the number of inquiries is actively flowing-in, which is improving as compared to two or three weeks ago. Some deals for LLDPE Film C4 at $780/ton-level to Malaysia were for special occasions. Onwards, the producer would not move out cargoes at such a level as the company is pushing to sell at the initial offer levels. Aside from the increase of inquiries, the source stated that the increment made by the producer was driven by the uptrend in the international prices and better demand for end-products.
Regarding the response, SSESSMENTS.COM was told that the producer is actually gaining good response from customers even though most of them are not buying in a big volume. Some customers decided to make procurement as a form of anticipation of further price increases in the days to come, while some others are buying because of the significant improvement in end-product demand. On the downstream market, most of the producer’s customers are running production at a full rate, yet, some of them are still running at a reduced rate since their end-product demand has yet to pick up.
Looking into July, the source opined to SSESSMENTS.COM that the room for import PE prices to fall is limited. At least, the prices should be able to remain stable as the global economy has gradually recovered. The source further added that the producer currently has backlogs on their end but it is expected to be cleared by early July.
