MOSCOW (MRC) - Polypropylene (PP) prices in Russia rose by Rb2,000-3, 000/tonne on the back of stronger demand and maintenance works at the plants, according to ICIS-MRC Price Report.
In the first half of this year, Russian PP market was a surplus, and the launch of two new production facilities with total capacity of 680,000 tonnes could only exacerbate the situation in the market. However, since July, the market situation has changed dramatically with the demand growing significantly.
In addition, scheduled and unscheduled maintenance works in September of three producers led to a serious lack of PP in the market, which triggered price rise.
The shortage began to be felt in mid-July, when Tomskneftekhim (SIBUR) stopped its capacities for three-week turnaround. The tight supply of PP from the producer made a lot of market participants form additional stock inventories, which was a rare thing before that.
Tomskneftekhim restarted its PP production a week later from the announced date due to the problems with feedstock.
Polyom (Omsk) planned to go for a turnaround in early September, which also put additional pressure on the PP market.
Lots of Russian producers sold all their PP quotas for September in the first two weeks; converters amid tight supply were buying PP in the stock. Some producers finished shipping September contract PP volumes in the beginning of October.
Polyom instead of two weeks turnaround stood idle a month because of the feedstock shortage.
Two other PP producers also had to suspend PP production in the late September; Stavrolen - because of the technical problems in the production of ethylene and Ufaorgsintez due to the lack of the feedstock.
All these events resulted in the increased shortage of PP in the Russian market and a further price rise. By mid-October raffia prices rose to Rb60,000-62,500/tonne CPT Moscow, including VAT. Deals for injection moulding homopolymer PP were in the range of Rb63 000-66 000/tonne CPT Moscow, including VAT.
As in September, lots of Russian producers have already sold all of their monthly volumes of polypropylene.
MRC