On Sunday May 20th, the base prices of petrochemical products, including polymers and chemical products, were announced for the 4th week of May (The 1st week of the 4th Iranian month) and, despite most experts’ predicting that polymeric base prices would generally be stable, this did not happen, and most of the grades were priced at higher rates .

In fact, we can say that, except for one case, other prices were on the rise, and this week could be called a week of increases in the polymer group of petrochemical products.

An interesting point at this week’s prices was the lack of new determined prices for polystyrene grades, which became apparent later, when the PDID office of NPC told that suppliers and manufacturers of this product group themselves, have since are determined to announce their prices and its presentation to the stock exchange. Now we should wait and see, what direction and what consequences will be followed, in particular, whereas in the last few weeks, several polystyrene grades have been among the most expensive and highly competitive materials in the free market, also at the IME. The most traded goods on the stock exchange were determined by the stock exchange for the HIPS 7240 grade with announcing the ceiling of max. gross margin of 80 tons per share of trading.

By the way, after mentioning these materials price changes, we my look at the greatest increases:

SBR, or Styrene Butadiene Rubber, rose by 7.5% over the past week to the top of the range, rising by 4.910 Rials per kilogram.

Subsequently, various bottle grades of PET, with a rise in prices from 3.1 to 4.6 percent of the base price of their last week, were the group with the largest increase in stock exchanges. However, nowadays, in the free market, the status of the PET bottle grades is critical, because of the holly Ramadan and the summer days that both are the peak seasons for consumption of this polymer material. At these days, some PET grades are traded up to 100,000 Rials (about 3.00 US$ in official value of CBI). Certainly, the increase in the base price of this grade on the stock exchange will intensify the competition and, as a result, will increase the price of PET bottles – especially in some grades. It seems that the authorities should think more seriously in this area and take necessary actions faster. We have analysed and considered the ways to prevent this increase.

The commodity, which faced a 3.1% rise in the base price and was in third place of price rises, was the PE100 extrusion grade of HDPE. This strategic item was traded at 63,070 Rials/Kg for delivery on the stock exchange.

The blowing type of HDPE also experienced 3 percent growth. The group of PVCs, on the S60 and S65 grades, faced a rise in price, which in spite of most of the forecasts provided by experts during the week, and the suspicion was that the product group had a slight decrease, which was not the case. And only one grade of this material family, which is  S7054 PVC, fell 0.8 percent from the previous week, the only commodity that experienced a downturn.

The following table shows all today’s determined prices for those polymers that are still behind the doors and the control of the PDID office.