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The China market resumes trading after the weeklong National Day on a positive note during the early hours on Monday, 8 October 2018. At 10 AM Malaysian time, futures contracts for PP on Dalian Commodity Exchange gain CNY158/ton ($23/ton) while LLDPE increases CNY120/ton ($17/ton).

Spot offers for PE climb CNY100/ton ($15/ton) compared to the pre-holiday period while spot homo-PP jump as much as CNY200/ton ($29/ton), sources reported. 

“In general, we continue receiving a high number of inquiries for homo-PP. Availability has yet to see any major improvement, and therefore, we plan to hold firm on prices first,” a trader said.

Meanwhile, the market seems a little concern over the PE market considering the large drop in upstream ethylene costs throughout the holiday week. “Converters are preparing for the Single Day sales. At the moment, inquiries are not as strong as expected for PE, however, we do hope to see better movement later this week,” another trader informed. 

The preliminary report shows that total PP and PE inventories at Sinopec and CNPC surged 245,000 tons throughout the holiday to approximately 860,000 tons as of 8 October 2018.