China market: Is another round of inventory replenishment on?

The Chinese PP market has been following softening trend since beginning of the week as a result of psychological effect of falling energy market. However, today, the market’s mood seems to swing back to the right place where many have expected after a series of plant outage reported in the past few days – a pick up in demand.

Indeed, there is good number of concluded deals observed in local market, concentrating mostly on homo-PP and LLDPE film grades. A trader in Ningbo commented, “There is a significant improvement in demand today and we managed to sell quite well to both converter and local re-sellers. Buyers could be making pre-Chinese New Year replenishment but we do not expect this trend to last long.”

Another trader in Shanghai added, “Our customers in central China are actively sending in enquiries for LLDPE film today. Buyers are not purchasing in large quantity and we need to monitor further market development in the next few days. We expect to see more stable trend for LLDPE film price in the near term relative to other products.”

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