A further billion dollars of polyethylene (PE) sales in China were lost year-on-year by the major exporters in January-July 2023 versus January-June 2023, according to my latest estimates.
These assessments make use of CFR (cost & freight) China ICIS Pricing assessments and the China Customs’ department’s records – via our Supply & Demand Database – of imports from the big exporters.
Today’s blog breaks these losses down by the grades – high-density PE (HDPE), low-density PE (LDPE) and linear-low density PE (LLDPE).
And the US again emerged as the big winner because of its very low feedstock cost position – ahead of some of the mixed-feed cracker operators in the Middle East.
But the size of US gains has declined. For example, US year-on-year HDPE sales gains in China slipped to $233m in January-July 2023 versus $323m in January-June 2023.
The latest ICIS Northeast HDPE Cost Curve appears to show that nearly all the region’s producers were losing money in the week from 25 August to 1 September 2023. It is a similar story in LDPE and LLDPE.
Published by: www.icis.com
John Richardson
08-Sep-2023
