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It is the time that international suppliers normally announce fresh offers for the new month; this time, new offers might emerge earlier than usual given the impending Lunar New Year holidays which is celebrated on 28 and 29 January. Southeast Asian players started to discuss their expectations for the coming trend with most opinion point to a more of stable to firmer outlook.

A Vietnamese buyer commented, “Our Saudi Arabia PE maker might open new prices tomorrow. Despite the fact that the maker did not completely sell off their allocation last month; we believed that February shipment offers would remain on the stable to firmer trend.” The source added that it is still difficult for import LLDPE film to surge significantly as domestic market remains bloated with existing supply. Yet, tight HDPE film availability in local ground might encourage some small increment from overseas suppliers.

A Middle Eastern producer informed, “We are discussing about the new offers and might give mass announcement in the next couple of days. The general demand condition in Southeast Asia is not very robust, yet we plan to hold firm on our prices due to lack of availability.”

While players are discussing about firmer trend, many regional converters, especially HDPE bags manufacturers, are struggling with higher raw material prices in the face of lacklustre end product business. A regional converter informed, “Our customers are resisting higher end product prices, which resulted in very thin margins for us. We plan to shutdown our plant earlier than others due to lack of orders.”

For this, it is believed that any possible price hike from international maker might be limited as buyers are unable to transfer the costs to end product prices.