North America September 2013: Price increases for PE and PS / PP and PVC roll over / Tight market may drive PE up again in October / Downward trend dominates/ Engineering thermoplastics continue sluggish

摘要

Contrary to expectations at the beginning of September, PE producers finally managed to push through a targeted price hike of USD 110/t (around EUR 85/t). As reported by PIE's cooperation partner, RTi (Fort Worth, Texas / USA; www. resinpros.com), the main motivation was poor HDPE availability, where a total of four producers had either declared a force majeure, or had placed customers on allocation. In mid-month, it became clear producer stocks had shrunk significantly in August, particularly PE. Apparently, there had been a considerable amount of pre-buying in the summer month in view of the approaching hurricane season in the Western Hemisphere, which has repeatedly brought bottlenecks and high prices for US converters in recent years.