Lack Of Essential Factors Hampered Vietnamese Buyers’ Acceptance For Import PE Offers
- Thai cargoes showed distinct price movement among other import PE offers
- Import price trend in reverse with demand condition
- Buyers will still resist high offers
Most import PE offers to the Vietnam market maintained its bullish trend. On a weekly comparison, the leading Saudi polyolefins producer increased the offers for HDPE Film and LLDPE Film C4 by $20/ton and $30/ton respectively. While on a monthly comparison, a significant increment of $100/ton captured on import HDPE Film offers of Kuwait and U.S origin, as well as LLDPE Film C4 of Kuwait origin. Contrastingly, a Thai PE producer adjusted down the offers for HDPE Film between $10-20/ton as compared to last week’s level. While for LLDPE Film C4, the producer has no allocation to the Vietnam market this week. From the trader’s end, SSESSMENTS.COM noted that a trader adjusted down the offers for Thai HDPE Film by $80/ton during the same time frame as the previous offers deemed too high. For another Southeast Asian cargo, HDPE Film of Philippines origin stood at $950/ton on LC at sight, CIF Vietnam main port basis. Bids submitted at $40/ton lower than the initial offer were rejected as the supplier only willing to sell at $5/ton lower.
In the domestic market, Vietnamese PE suppliers are having difficulties to move out the cargoes as lower-priced cargoes are still available in the market. Due to weak buying sentiment, a trader decided to lower offers for localized LLDPE Film C4 of South Korea origin by VND200,000/ton ($9/ton) as compared to last week’s level. Meanwhile, on a monthly comparison, offers for localized LLDPE Film C4 of Saudi origin increased by VND500,000/ton ($21/ton), SSESSMENTS.COM was told.
The uptrend in the import PE offers is deemed unacceptable by Vietnamese buyers since the market is still in the recovery process. Added to that, the lower-priced cargoes are still available in the domestic market. Improvement in buying sentiment remains off-sight since the demand for the end-products is not encouraging. Most converters are only running at 60-70% from the normal production capacity and the market is only able to digest around 50% of the finished products as compared to the normal output. On the supply front, offers for LLDPE Film C4 from a Thai PE producer are absent this week due to no allocation. Likewise, SSESSMENTS.COM was informed that the supply for HDPE Film of U.S and Kuwait origin is tight. However, it does not give any significant impact since demand remains dull.
Some Vietnamese market players opined that offers for import PE cargoes will remain firm as supported by the limited supply at the foreign producers’ end. However, buyers will still show a stiff resistance as the demand for the end-products is not supporting any price increases. Buyers’ acceptance towards high prices is expected to be better once the lower-priced cargoes are completely depleted, sources told SSESSMENTS.COM.
