Pre-holiday replenishment in China slow down and delivery becomes a challenge

The aggressive replenishment activities before the weeklong National Day Holiday appear to cool down toward the end of this week. The broadening holiday mood among buyers might only get stronger in the coming days while delivery is now a real challenge in the absence of driver coupled with road-block. 

A trader reported having sold 1000 tons of LLDPE film to local buyers this week started experiencing dropping business. “We are still having few hundred tons of LLDPE film, hoping to deplete before the holiday. Buyers have mostly purchased sufficient stock and might withdraw to the sideline soon,” the source said.

Meanwhile, other traders are not very satisfied with the sales results this time pointing to the fact that purchasing activities took place too late and too quickly. “Our customers only replenish for the first half of October. This is below our expectation, however, this would mean that more replenishments are needed after the holiday,” another trader said. 

Several small to medium size converters in the film and pipe sector are taking 5 days off for the holiday while still keep production running for the other days. This seems to be a good news for the market, yet, these companies were not used to shutting production during the previous National Day holidays. “Because demand for our end product is not very strong. More orders might be coming in after the holidays, and we would only procure additional material by then,” a cast film converter said.

Logistic companies started to close for holidays and many companies might not receive their parcel before the weekend as a result. Sources said that all purchases today and tomorrow might only reach customers’ warehouses by the second week of October.