Polymer Base Price Management Neglected Global Prices

Today, on Sun. Sept. 29th, 2019, the PDID Office of NPC announced the base prices for the polymers to be sold at the IME for the current week. Irrespective of experts’ views, the decreasing trend of prices shows that the PDID Office has considered the present situation of the Iranian market more than its conventional formula for price definitions and also what is happening in the global market.

Today the “NIMA” US$ value for base price calculations reduced for Rls. 435 (about 0.4%) in comparison with last week and reached to Rls. 108,962. Regarding the fact that the US$ value rate changes was not so considerable, it was expected that the global prices would have more effect over the price definition. However, the management of base prices instead of the conventional price formulation was an accidental event that happened today.

If it was otherwise, and the global prices was more effective over the prices, in that case the prices for commodities like different grades of PE (LD, LLD and HD) should have been booming and this was not a positive event for the Iranian market that is just bypassing the recession condition.

Though the global prices are still under the shadow of Aramco attacks, specially in the conditions that the supply of ethylene has decreased and its prices are increasing at the east and south east of Asia, it seems that the PDID office has decided not to consider the global prices role in base price definition, at least for this week.

In line with this, the price of most types of polymers – including most polyethylene grades – declined in the Iranian market today, with only a few commodity groups experiencing price increases that even for these materials the price increases were limited.

Price decline side

Regarding price decreases, the following commodities faced with highest price decrease:

1- Different grades of PET with 2.5 % decrease. Although due to the end of the high market demand this decline was expected. Also EPS commodities were in this row with about 2.5% decrease equal to Rls. 3,.060 and its prices reached to Rls. 120,564;

2- PVC groups with 1.3% decrease were the 2nd group with the highest price decrease;

3- Other polymers including HDPE and rotational HDPE with decreasing prices which were very negligible (0.6%) resided at the 3rd group.

The increasing side of market

In the upstream market, fewer polymer commodity groups were seen. The amount of the price increase on this side of the table was also more restrictive than its downward direction. Only one commodity in the upward direction of the market faced more than 1%  in base price and the rest of the polymer commodities faced a 1% increase in limited prices.

1- Today the extrusion grade PE 80 of HDPE with 3.5% increase in base price resulted in an increase of Rls. 3,200 and its price reached to Rls. 94,435;

2- The 2nd highest base price increase with 0.95% recorded for GPPS 1540 and its price reached to Rls. 112,763;

3- ABS with 0.87%

4- The HDPE extrusion grade PE 100 with 0.7%

Last week the total number of successful bids at the IME hall was 168 out of 196.
The following prices are the free market prices on Sat. Sept. 28th, 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. 22nd till Sat. Sept. 28th., 2019.

The last PIMI weekly analysis published at this channel was: Polymer Prices In Iran Is Moving In-Line With The Global Market