On Sunday, May 6th, 2018, the Petrochemical Downstream Industries Development (PDID) office of NPC announced the basic prices for polymer and chemical products in its weekly routine, that during last 3 weeks has had to forget about a discovery price for the exchange rate of the US$. It has been fixed for authorized transactions at Rls. 42000 per US$.
Having the constant price for the dollar in the formula for calculating the polymers’ base price, as well as relative stability of the polymer prices in the GCC and East Asian markets, the general expectation was that PDID prices in the polymer products sector did not change much.
Regarding the stability of the price of polymer materials in the Gulf states and the not-so-soaring fluctuations of some grades in East Asian markets, experts expected that the base prices of materials would not fluctuate. But it did.
The highest increase was seen for Bright SBR 1502, which was 3.9% higher than its “last week’s price“, and on the other end, the highest decrease was attributed to PE100 extrusion grade, which is 2.2% higher than its previous price.
We have briefly looked at other curves that have been faced with increasing and decreasing relative prices.
On the rising categories, as expected, all types of bottle grade of PET faced with growth of 2.8% which is the highest price increase after styrenics. Afterwards, the grades 200, 300, and 400 of EPS increased about 2% compared to its base price of last week.
The price of PVC group in a variety of grades, increased by 1.3% after a few weeks of facing with falling prices, was set to rise in price this week, according to our daily forecast at Telegram Channel. The reason for this rise was the rising price of PVC in the East Asian markets.
Textile and injection PP type, rotational PE, HDPE injection also experienced slight increases in their base prices.
On the downside part, as previously mentioned, HDPE faced with 2.2% drop in prices tht was the highest drop in prices. Subsequently, bottle grades of HDPE (BL3 / 0035) and film grades of HDPE (X5 / F7000) dropped by 0.5 and 0.4 percent.
The other ups and downs could be seen and compared at the following table.
Table: Comparison of the base prices of polymer products in the week between April 29th-May 6th, 2018.
| Commodity | April 29th
2018 |
May 6th
2018 |
Change
Amount |
Change % |
| US$ Value | 42000 | 42000 | 0 | 0 |
| EPS 200 / 300 | 64625 | 65894 | +1269 | + 2.0 |
| EPS 400 | 62796 | 64029 | +1233 | + 2.0 |
| GPS 1540 | 63904 | -841 | – 1.3 | |
| HDPE Blowing (BL3 / 0035) | 51104 | 50874 | -230 | – 0.5 |
| HDPE Extrusion (EX3/PE80) | 59265 | 59206 | -59 | – 0.1 |
| HDPE Extrusion (PE100) | 62511 | 61139 | -1372 | -2.3 |
| HDPE Film (X5 / F7000) | 51104 | -20 | – 0.0 | |
| HDPE Injection (HI500 / 52518) | 44153 | 44273 | +120 | + 0.3 |
| HDPE Rotational (3840) | 46140 | 46265 | +125 | + 0.3 |
| HIPS 7240 | 66299 | 66089 | -210 | – 0.3 |
| LDPE Film (190 / 020 / 0075) | 47880 | 47780 | -100 | – 0.3 |
| LLDPE 209AA | 45654 | 45614 | -40 | – 0.1 |
| PET Bottle G781 | 53623 | 55117 | +1494 | + 2.8 |
| PET Bottle G785 | 0 | 0 | 0 | |
| PET Bottle G821 | 56270 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| PET Bottle G825 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| PET Textile (641 & 645) | 47129 | 47129 | 0 | 0 |
| PP Inj. (MR 230) | 55557 | 55844 | +287 | + 0.5 |
| PP Inj. (RP 340) | 56754 | 57041 | +287 | + 0.5 |
| PP Textile (R552 / Z30S) | 49891 | 50178 | +287 | + 0.6 |
| PVC E6834 | 36847 | 37328 | +481 | + 1.3 |
| PVC S7054 | 38601 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| PVC S57 | 38601 | 39106 | +505 | + 1.3 |
| PVC S60 | 37899 | 38395 | +496 | + 1.3 |
| PVC S65 | 35092 | 35551 | +459 | + 1.3 |
| SBR Bright 1502 | 63776 | 65195 | +2419 | + 3.9 |
| SBR 1712 | 58906 | 61325 | +2419 | + 4.1 |
