MOSCOW (MRC) -- US production of major plastic resins totaled 6.9 billion pounds in March 2021, down by 13.6% year on year, according to the American Chemistry Council's (ACC) statistics.
At the same time, March output of the said products was up by 29.1% compared to the prior month.
Year-to-date production was 20.5 billion pounds, a 11.0% decrease as compared to the same period in 2020.
Sales and captive (internal) use of major plastic resins totaled 7.0 billion pounds during March 2021, an increase of 1.3% compared to the prior month, and a decrease of 10.5% from the same month one year earlier.
Year-to-date sales and captive use was 21.7 billion pounds, a 5.2% decrease as compared to the same period in 2020.
As MRC informed earlier, ACC’s chemical activity barometer (CAB), a leading indicator and composite index of industry activity, rose 0.7% sequentially in April on a three-month moving average (3MMA) basis, following a 1.1% gain in March and an 0.9% gain in February.
We remind that Russia's output of chemical products rose in February 2021 by 5.3% year on year. Thus, production of basic chemicals increased year on year by 7.5% in the first two months of 2021, according to Rosstat's data. February production of polymers in primary form was 861,000 tonnes versus 196,000 tonnes in January. Overall output of polymers in primary form totalled 1,770,000 tonnes over the stated period, up by 8.4% year on year.
Ethylene and propylene are the main feedstocks for the production of polyethylene (PE) and polypropylene (PP), respectively.
According to MRC's ScanPlast report, Russia's estimated PE consumption totalled 576,270 tonnes in the first three month of 2021, up by 4% year on year. Low density polyethylene (LDPE) and high density polyethylene (HDPE) shipments increased. At the same time, PP shipments to the Russian market totalled 410,890 tonnes in January-March 2021, up by 56% year on year. Supply of homopolymer PP and PP block copolymers increased.
MRC