Iran Polymer Market Returns To Its Downward Trend In Base Prices

As of every Sundays, today the new base prices of polymers was announced by PDID Office of NPC, and as of our analyst’s yesterday forecast most types of polymer grades fall down in base prices.

According to the PIMI market analyst, the US$ value for the materials’ base price calculations determined at Rls. 108.482, which shows 0.4% or Rls. 444 decrease compared to last week.  Alongside this, the global prices were also relatively stable. Both effective elements lead the polymer market return to a downward trend in its base prices in the Iran market.

In PIMI yesterday’s analysis (Click Here), considering the complete price stability of Poly-Ethylene, our prediction was that most types and grades of this subset of commodities would today face a slight decline equivalent to a drop in the US$ value in the “NIMA” FOREX system of Iran, which would have been the case for the materials market in Iran. At the same time, only one grade of PE did not follow this rule, and it faced with a slight increase in price.

Another expectation for the market was the rise in the price of PP, that it also happened and the material price followed a slight increase in the price due to the price rise in the East and South Asian markets. The slight increase in the price of PP in the Iran market was recorded in the Middle East markets, despite a 1.3 percent decline at the latter markets.

Overall, it can be said that both the number of polymer commodity groups experiencing price growth was negligible compared to the groups experiencing price declines and their increase compared to the declining market rate.

It seems that after a period of psychological shock from the attacks on Aramco disrupting the world supply of oil and liquid feeds, the Iranian market has regained its momentum and the downtrend has begun. The fall in prices, along with rising demand, is a positive sign that the direct message is the likelihood of an increase in the volume of polymers trading in the Iran’s petrochemical market at the IME Hall for petrochemical tradings.

The incremental side of the market.

This week, only four polymer products faced with a price increase, with the remaining polymers at the declining side.

1- In the uptrend market, the highest base price increase was attributable to the fibre grade of PP with 0.6% increase over the last week. This increase in the price of the commodity reached its price to 101.050 Rials/Kg. The other materials at this side were:

2- PP for other uses than fibre with 0.5% increase

3- Extrusion grade of HDPE (PE 100) with 0.3% which changed its official price to Rls. 98,540.

4- The film grade of the HDPE which a very negligible price increase of about 0.01%.

Market downward direction:
In the downward direction of the market,

1- Expandable Poly-Styrene faced the highest drop in the base price among other polymers compared to the last week’s prices, with a 2.5% drop in prices. In the global market, this commodity group also experienced a sharp decline in prices. Given this drop in base prices, the base prices of EPS (grades 200, 300, and 400.) reached to  117,515 Rls./Kg.

2- Different grades of types of PET like all last months and weeks were faced with serious price decline and with 2.29 – 2.34% recorded for the 2nd row at this side of the market. The highest price for the bottle grade reached to Rls. 105,424 which in comparison with the last year shows a price decline of about 50%.

3- The LLDPE with 1.32% was the group’s third highest declined in price material for this week.

4- GPPS was the fourth polymer product to decline with 1.29% which is  just 0.03 percent less than LLDPE.

The following prices are the free market prices on Sat. Oct. 5th., (one day before tomorrow’s price announcement). The GREEN figures show decreased prices, the RED the increased ones. While, the BLACK figure is showing the prices that remained constant, all in comparison with last Saturday free market prices.

The following table shows the weekly trading figures including ODTv index for the week between Sun. Sept. 29th., till Sat. Oct. 5th., 2019.