Jul 08, 2025 5:51 a.m.

Asian players: August PVC outlook mixed but less likely to see significant increases

Asian players: August PVC outlook mixed but less likely to see significant increases

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Players in the Asian PVC market is now awaiting fresh PVC offers for August shipment from a major Taiwanese maker, which might be announced by earlier next week. At the moment, the expectation on the possible market direction for the new month remains very diverse, especially between major importers: China and India.

It is the monsoon season in India – the largest PVC importer in the region, and therefore, demand here is slower than usual, sources reported. Despite the smooth sales recorded in the previous month, Indian buyers are not strong advocates to the possibility that market could advance strongly this time. 

“Demand is not strong due to the monsoon season and buying interest for import cargoes might be limited to a certain extent given the depreciation of the local currency against the US dollar. Major local producer has just announced new offers at unchanged levels month-on-month and we believed that overseas sellers would follow suit,” a market source commented. 

However, Chinese players are hoping to see some increases citing the lack of supply in the local ground, which has been supporting the firming trend here over the past couple of weeks. Stringent environmental regulations have capped the production output at not only downstream carbide-based PVC plants, but also upstream carbide and liquefied alkali units. 

“We might not be able to allocate any export allocation this time as we are having huge backlogs to clear. The third quarter is the traditional high demand season and we do see a good chance for higher prices to take place,” a carbide-based producer commented while adding that production costs have surged drastically due to high upstream costs.

Another concern Chinese players are putting on the table is that the intensified trade conflict between China and the USA might poses as a psychological barrier for Chinese buyers to take-in USA cargoes this month, leading to the need to seek alternative materials. USA was the second largest PVC exporter to China in 2017, accounted for more than 430,000 tons in volume.

In light of such development, USA cargoes might find its home elsewhere within or beyond the region. Related to this issue, Turkey – the third largest PVC importer in the world, has imposed retaliate tariffs on import PVC from the USA with effective 21 June 2018, locking this origin with a total 38.5 per cent import duties and 18.81 per cent anti-dumping duties.

Trading activities across the region are slowing down ahead of the new price announcement and with the looming issue of the international trade war and currency exchange rate, the market is now watching out closely latest price decision from major suppliers before making any decision.