Turkey's plastics imports in August 2010, highest in 10 years

06-Oct-10

Turkey’s plastics imports in August 2010 rose when compared to August 2009, according to data released by the Turkish Statistical Institute (TUIK), as per Chemorbis. August 2010 figures shows a trend line above the past ten years of imports, thereby setting a record high for the month. Total plastics imports for August 2010 reached 280,000 tons, almost tripling 103,000 tons seen in August 2000. Despite firm import prices over the past few months, Turkey imported more plastics raw materials in August 2010 vs August 2009, although the figure was below the monthly import figures for March, April, May, June and July 2010. Of the total polymer imports in August 2010, origins which are subject to customs duties accounted for 184,000 tons, while duty-free origins accounted for a smaller quantity of 96,000 tons. In August, duty-free origins saw a large drop from July, declining by 32,000 tons month over month, while dutiable origins recorded a small improvement, rising by 19,000 tons compared to the previous month of the same year. Homo-PP imports tracked a mainly stable trend- 77,000 tons was imported in July 2010, and the same amount was imported in August 2010. S-PVC imports recorded a slight decrease moving down from the July figure of 49,000 tons to 31,000 tons in August. LDPE imports were slightly up in August to 18,000 tons while HDPE imports did not record a significant change month over month, remaining at around 45,000 tons. Similarly, LLDPE imports tracked a stable trend for the fifth month in a row, being reported as 22,000 tons in August 2010. According to the cumulative imports statistics on ChemOrbis, the country has imported 2,394,000 tons over the eight month period to August 2010. Looking at the cumulative figures only, Turkey’s plastics imports over the first eight months of 2010 also show a trend line above the past ten years of imports, going back to the same period of the year 2000.