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MOSCOW (MRC) -- North American
polypropylene (PP) supply has been extremely tight since the summer of 2020,
when the industry saw a number of plant outages, followed by Hurricane Laura and
Hurricane Delta, which damaged LyondellBasell's massive PP facility in Lake
Charles, Louisiana, reported Chemweek with
reference to market participants.
Just this week, LyondellBasell
lifted its PP force majeure declaration from those events.
Three other US
suppliers - Ineos, Formosa, and Total - still have PP force majeure (FM)
declarations. In addition to plant issues and scheduled maintenance, the PP
industry is facing a monomer shortage that shows no sign of easing in the near
term.
Tight monomer supply has played a role in limiting PP operating
rates. North American PP capacity utilization was at 90%-91% in November and
December as average producer inventory days dropped into the high 20s, according
to data from the ACC Plastics Industry Producers' Statistics Group.
As
MRC informed
earlier, LyondellBasell (Rotterdam, the Netherlands) declared force majeure
on PP supplies from France on 2 December, 2020. The reason for the
force majeure was not disclosed at the time of press. The FM was lifted in the first
week of February.
According to MRC's ScanPlast report,
PP shipments to the Russian market reached 1 240,000 tonnes in 2020 (calculated
using the formula: production, minus exports, plus imports, excluding producers'
inventories as of 1 January, 2020). Supply of exclusively PP random
copolymer increased. |
