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The Southeast Asian PE market has been quiet this week mainly due to the lack of new offers from international suppliers. It appears that most sellers are on wait and see stance, monitoring further development before announcing fresh prices. At the meantime, couples have expressed sell idea prices for the new month.

Most suppliers contacted by CommoPlast are looking at stable to slightly firmer levels for May shipment given strong upstream costs and expected tight availability for certain grads stemming from the recent production issues.

A Singaporean maker reported to have sold out April allocation for LDPE and might implement moderate hike on May shipment cargoes. A distributor said, “Allocation for May is very limited as our principal supplier is slowing down operating rate amid feedstock supply disruption. The plant might be shut in the coming days. We were informed about a possible price hike, yet no official offers at the moment.” 

Another Malaysian maker encountered plant shutdown in the past week due to water supply issues, and at the time this report is published, the petrochemical complex has yet to fully come back online. A source close to the company reported, “We are carrying large backlog in local market at the moment. Though the general buying interest within Southeast Asia is weak, we are planning to keep offers stable month on month basis to reflect the tight availability condition.”

While there are market talks that couple of Middle Eastern suppliers are facing inventory pressure, most other show no intention to offer any significant discount for the new month. “Most PE producers in Saudi Arabia faced production disruption in the first quarter of this year while healthy demand in Europe in previous months attracted great attention from sellers in this region. We aware of the situation in Asia at the moment, however, we plan to keep our offer mostly stable from last month and might implement other measure later if needed,” a Saudi producer added.

Official offers might only be announced in the coming week, however, regional players believed that room for price increment is rather limited as tightening supply is balanced with weak demand.