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MORNING BRIEFING

CommoPlast                 Tuesday, 22 September 2026

                                                                                                                             commoplast.com

MARKET MOVEMENT

Closing prices, previous trading day. Monomers show direction only. Other monomers than naphtha are unavailable today.

TODAY’S DEVELOPMENTS

POLYETHYLENE · CHINA

China's LDPE film hits multi-year high as import squeeze meets holiday-thinned demand

China's LDPE film market has surged by more than 30% in under three months, touching levels last seen in the first quarter of 2022, as war-driven disruption to Middle Eastern supply collides with China's structural reliance on imports for this particular PE grade. Combined shipments from major Middle Eastern exporters, totaling over half of China's total LDPE imports, fell nearly half in the first seven months of the year, a gap the market has been unable to close even as hopes for fresh Iranian cargoes repeatedly fell short.

The rally has since lost steam as converters complete pre-holiday restocking and step back to watch the Middle East situation, pulling spot prices down modestly from their peak. That pullback, though, hasn't been matched by any real supply relief, with domestic producers also trimming output on feedstock constraints even as import volumes stay restricted.

The real test comes after Golden Week. Thin restocking into the break means converters could return to a market still short of fresh supply, reviving upward pressure quickly if Middle Eastern flows stay constrained, while any genuine recovery in Iranian arrivals or domestic run rates would tilt the balance back toward buyers.

Read full story:

Supply crunch drives China LDPE film to 4.5-year high; buyers push back

PLANTS ·  SOUTH KOREA

H&L Advanced declares emergency shutdown at Daesan cracker, freezing exports days after merger

Asian polyolefin markets set to face a supply tightening after South Korea's H&L Advanced declared a shutdown at its Daesan naphtha cracker, barely two weeks after the Lotte Daesan-HD Hyundai merger completed. The issue, marked by visible flaring at the site, has jeopardized the group's upstream base at Daesan just as the market was still adjusting to the merger's own capacity cuts, which had already trimmed combined ethylene and propylene output.

The commercial response has been immediate, with the company halting all exporting activity across regions from 15 September, refusing new bids, and placing pre-existing contracts under individual case-by-case review pending restart timing that remains entirely undetermined.

Read full story:

H&L Advanced paralyzes Daesan cracker following emergency shutdown and flaring incident.

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